


Delicate

by Blue Kat (AKABlueKat)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Drama, F/M, Fred Weasley Lives, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Hogwarts, Romance, Vacation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-05-23 23:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKABlueKat/pseuds/Blue%20Kat
Summary: In a perfect world, Maggie would feel right at home standing up in her cousin's very trendy and glamorous destination wedding. In a perfect world, Maggie would definitely stop finding inventive ways to embarrass herself in front of Fred Weasley. But it's not a perfect world…and really, that might end up being rather perfect for Maggie. (AU: Fred lives!).





	1. Las Ballenas

Alicia and Lee _could_ have gotten married in London. That would have been the sensible thing for them to do. London was a perfectly good place to have a wedding. The Spinnets lived in London, along with most of Lee and Alicia’s friends. Lee’s parents were just over in Surrey. No passports would have been required, very few hotel rooms would have been needed. They would have had their pick of any number of beautiful venues.

Instead they chose a beach. In Las Ballenas.

My feelings about Las Ballenas were as follows: no thank you. Las Ballenas is the sort of place that you visit when you are very glamorous and enjoy trendy clubs where the lights are slightly too dim and the music is all bass and a little too loud. If doing a shot of two hundred year old Ogden’s from the horn of a unicorn ice sculpture sounds like fun, then Las Ballenas is the place for you. 

I am not that sort of person—I was in Hufflepuff, for Merlin’s sake. I prefer the simpler things in life: well-worn jeans, overcast afternoons, Ogden’s mixed into a strong cup of coffee sipped leisurely in front of a crackling fire with a good book or a few good friends, ice sculptures as decoration and not barware.

Alicia knows all these things about me—she knows me better than anyone else after all—which is why the statement “We’re having the wedding in Las Ballenas” was immediately followed by what can only be described as a campaign of strategic, targeted guilt.

“You’ll be going, course,” she said, before I could even say a word. We were sitting in the kitchen in her flat, a set of glossy travel brochures spread out on the table in front of us. “You _have_ to, Mags. You’re my maid of honor.”

This was the first time I’d heard anything about being her maid of honor. This was also likely part of her strategy: overwhelm me with so much information that I had no choice but to blinkingly accept whatever mad scheme she’d come up with.

“I’m your maid of honor?”

“Of course you are.” She said this with the authority of an indisputable fact: the sky is blue, the grass is green, my cousin Maggie is going to be my maid of honor at my mad island wedding. “Who else would I choose?”

“I dunno, Angelina or Katie, maybe,” I said, shrugging. “You’re awfully close with them.

“Maggie, you were literally the only person to witness my engagement.”

“Only because Lee knew that you would want a photo and he didn’t want to chance it with a spell.”

Alicia sighed. “You are missing the point. You were always going to be my maid of honor. There was never any doubt about that.” She smiled with the sly sort of look of a woman with an agenda. “Besides, I knew you’d say yes.”

She was right, of course. I wouldn’t miss her wedding if it was underwater and on the moon. Alicia was the closest thing I had to a sister. The closest thing I had to a sibling, really, especially since…

Well. I didn’t want to think about that. Not now. I took a long drink from my mug of tea.

Alicia seemed to take this as an expression of my hesitance about Las Ballenas and not for the darker, sadder thought that it was. 

“I mean, look at this.” She slid a brochure across the table. “This is the hotel we’ve chosen. Look at me and tell me that doesn’t look bloody gorgeous.”

She was right: it was a beautiful hotel. It was the sort of place that looked so pretty in pictures that you automatically thought it couldn’t possibly be real. The front of the brochure featured a room with a private terrace that looked out at an ocean that was an almost impossible shade of aquamarine. Purple bougainvillea grew along the terrace railing, rustling gently in the breeze.

“I know you’re not keen on Las Ballenas,” said Alicia as I turned the page to a picture of a pristine beach, “but I really want you to be there. It’s going to be a really small ceremony. Just our parents and our wedding party, probably. We really wanted the people who are most important to us. I couldn’t imagine getting married without you there with me.”

I think she knew that there was never any chance that I was going to say no. This was just to make “no” an impossibility several times over. I sighed and chucked the brochure at her.

“Of course I’m going to your wedding, you dingus.”

Alicia’s smile was brighter than sunshine as she flung her arms around me, nearly knocking over my cup of tea. 

“I knew you would!” She planted a big kiss on my cheek before releasing me. “It’s going to be brilliant, you’ll see. It’s not just nightclubs—the beaches are gorgeous and there’s snorkeling and swimming and Lee found a place that does a waterfall hike with horseback riding. You’re going to love it, I promise.”

* * *

“She’s getting married where?” said Mum when I told her and Dad the news at Sunday dinner that week.

“Las Ballenas,” I said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “It’s that island near Ibiza. The one where that Keeper for the Holyhead Harpies got into trouble for smashing up his hotel room while he was on doxy dust.”

“Right, Ramses Llewellyn, wasn’t it?” said Dad, helping himself to a dinner roll. “Well, that sounds dreadful.”

“I think you mean it sounds like it’s not for us,” said Mum, casting a scolding look at Dad.

“No, I mean it sounds dreadful,” said Dad cheerfully.

“Well, you’re not going to be invited,” I informed him.

“That’s a relief.”

Mum set down her fork and gave Dad a stern look. “ _Oscar_.”

“What? It’s no reflection on Alicia and Lee, I love them both dearly and wish them the best,” said Dad, spreading a generous helping of butter onto his roll. “I just have no interest in licking doxy dust off of a stranger’s neck or whatever it is they do there.”

“I’ve heard the beaches are quite lovely,” said Mum. “Bonnie Harper and her husband holiday there sometimes and she says they’ve got the whitest sand she’s ever seen.”

“Bah,” said Dad, waving his hand dismissively. “Sounds like a sunburn waiting to happen.”

Mum gave Dad an exasperated look and seemed to give up on the idea of him contributing usefully to this conversation. She turned to me. “So are they eloping then?”

“No, it’s just going to be very small. Aunt Lynn, Uncle Pete, Lee’s parents, and the wedding party.”

“How big is the wedding party?”

“Well, I’m the maid of honor. Alicia’s asked Angelina Weasley and Katie Bell to be bridesmaids. And then Lee’s got Fred Weasley as his best man and George Weasley and Oliver Wood as his groomsmen.”

“Oliver Wood?” said Dad, perking up a bit. “The Keeper for Puddlemere United?”

“Yeah, he and Lee shared a flat for a few years after Hogwarts and they got to be good friends. And he just got married to Katie Bell as well.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “And I’m not going to ask him to sign anything for you.”

“Oh, go on Maggie,” wheedled Dad. “Can’t you do a favor for your poor old Dad? Your brother would—”

Dad stopped suddenly, blinking rapidly and that familiar, choking silence descended on the table. I looked out the window, staring hard at the magnolia tree in the front yard, anywhere but the empty seat at the table.

“I imagine that’s going to be quite expensive,” said Mum after a moment. This is one way we handled this loss when it popped up unexpectedly, stunning us with a sharp and searing pain that poked at old wounds that we knew would never fully heal: by changing the subject and talking about something else until the lumps in our throats eased and the pain receded to that quietly dull ache that we’d become accustomed to in the last five years. 

“Yes.” I took a sip of water, hoping it might ease the lump in my throat. “And she’s insisting on paying for my room.”

Mum’s eyes went wide. “She isn’t.”

“She is. She did, actually.” I sighed. “She already booked it and sent them the money.”

It seemed that Alicia’s management of her finances was enough of a shock to distract both Mum and Dad from the topic that Dad had inadvertently raised.

“That’s too expensive, you can’t possibly—”

“Oh, believe me, I have tried to talk both her and Lee out of it.” I took another drink of water. The lump in my throat was shrinking, slowly but surely. “They wouldn’t hear it. Alicia said she knows it’s expensive, she knows it’s not exactly my first choice of destination, and she reckons that this way I definitely won’t be able to come up with some excuse and bow out at the last minute.”

Dad laughed, the lines on his face softening and I felt myself breathe an inner sigh of relief. “Sometimes I wonder if that girl ought to have been in Slytherin.”

“She’s not subtle enough to be cunning.” I took another drink of water and reckoned I could manage some more food. “She did ask me to tell you that she hopes you’re not offended that I’m invited and you’re not.”

“Of course we aren’t,” said Mum.

“In fact, I think we ought to send her a very nice wedding gift and a thank you note for not inviting us,” said Dad, chuckling.

“ _Oscar_.”

“What?” said Dad, shrugging his shoulders and taking a large bite out of his dinner roll. “I’m quite prone to sunburns.”

* * *

 

The wedding was the last week in May. Alicia and I took an early afternoon Portkey down to Madrid, then Ibiza, then Las Ballenas. Lee met us at the hotel, having gone down a few hours earlier to take care of some of the errands that still needed doing. He greeted Alicia with a kiss and presented me with a bouquet of mango calla lilies.

“These are gorgeous, but shouldn’t you be saving these sort of gestures for your soon-to-be-wife?” I asked.

“My soon-to-be-wife has given me very specific instructions that we’re to treat you like a queen this week because you’ve only come here because you love her very much,” said Lee, snaking an arm around Alicia’s waist and pulling her close to him. “Do you think it’s working?” he said to her in a stage whisper.

Alicia rolled her eyes. “I also told him to not be an idiot about it, but I suppose I can’t have everything.”

“Well, it’s too late to get our money back, so I reckon you’re stuck with me,” said Lee, planting a kiss on top of Alicia’s head.

“You’re already paying for my hotel room,” I reminded them. “Don’t you think that’s enough as it is?”

“For you, Maggie? Hardly.” Lee grinned. “Come on, let’s get you checked in.”

Alicia and I would be sharing my room until the wedding night, at which point she and Lee would move into a honeymoon suite. There was part of me that thought perhaps the room wouldn’t be as lovely as it looked in the pictures, but I found that this was not the case as soon as we opened the door. A cool breeze was blowing in through the open windows and the view from the private terrace was even more breathtaking when you could smell the salt of the ocean and hear the gentle lapping of the waves. I flopped down on one of the two double beds; it was softer than a cloud.

The mattress sank a bit as Alicia sat down next to me. “When are the others supposed to arrive?”

“Katie and Wood should be along within an hour or so,” said Lee. “Fred, George, and Angelina are due in by four. Our parents arrive late tomorrow morning.”

“What do you think?” said Alicia, poking me in the shoulder. “Do you want to do a bit of unpacking and laze around until Katie and Oliver arrive and then we can start sorting out what we want to do?”

“I may not actually leave this bed for the duration of the trip, it’s quite comfortable.”

“I’m trying to be nice to you, so I’m not going to hit you in the face with a pillow, but know that I am thinking about it,” said Alicia, tapping me on the nose.

“Thank you for your consideration. But to answer your question, yes, that sounds like a lovely plan.”

Alicia patted my shoulder. “Let’s go with that then. Lee, how far have you gotten with the checklist?”

“Only a few things left.” He gave her a slow and lazy smile that almost certainly heralded the arrival of some inappropriate sentiment. “Though I reckon I could make some time if you’d like to have a bit of a lie in in my room.”

Alicia rolled her eyes and stood up to peck him chastely on the cheek. “You’re a pervy wanker and I love you desperately.”

“Is that a yes?”

“No.” Alicia stepped away from him and hauled one of her bags up onto the bed. “You know perfectly well that you’ve got things to do. And I would remind you that you are sharing that room with Fred until the wedding night and I’d really rather not start this trip off with an awkward encounter.”

Lee shrugged. “Had to try didn’t I?”

“Did you, though?” I asked, making a face at him. “With me right in the room? Me, her flesh and blood?”

Lee grinned at me, looping his arms around Alicia’s waist as she opened her bag. “Oh go on, Mags, it’s nothing you’ve not seen before.” 

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at him sternly. “You’re supposed to be coddling me.”

“I’m afraid the force of my love for my beloved is too strong to contain.” He nuzzled Alicia’s neck in an overly exaggerated way that made her pull a face and immediately try to wiggle free of him.

“All right, that’s it.” She turned around and prodded him in the chest with her forefinger. “Go be useful.”

“One kiss.” Lee presented his cheek to Alicia.

She promptly swatted him in the face with a t-shirt. “Out.”

Lee grinned and slapped her on the bum before running out of the room.

“This is the man I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with,” sighed Alicia, refolding the t-shirt.

“Well, as he pointed out earlier, it’s too late to get your money back.”

“Pity.” But she was smiling as she shook her head.

Between the glorious ocean view and the world’s most comfortable bed, it was a bit of a struggle to convince myself to spend time on something as mundane as unpacking. Eventually I managed to drag myself to my feet and spent a few minutes half-heartedly piling my clothes into the dresser drawers and arranging my toiletries in the bathroom. I pronounced the results messy but acceptable and immediately relocated myself to one of the lounge chairs on the terrace, book in hand. 

“You know, for someone who wasn’t particularly keen on coming here, you seem to be enjoying yourself,” said Alicia when she came out to join me a few minutes later, accompanied by the ever present purple notebook with “Wedding” scrawled on the front in her looping script.

“It’s a gorgeous view,” I said primly. “I never said I was opposed to that part of the trip.”

“You are your father’s daughter.” Alicia laughed. “Did I show you the note he sent?”

“No, was it ridiculous?”

She grinned and withdrew a folded card from her notebook and handed it to me. I recognized my parents’ stationery and Dad’s blocky handwriting:

> _Alicia and Lee,_
> 
> _Rita and I are delighted for you both and send our warmest wishes as you start your new life together._
> 
> _I would also like to thank you for not inviting us to your wedding, as I am quite prone to sunburns and Rita and I are both too old to enjoy the trendy underwater nightclubs or whatever it is they do there._
> 
> _I do regret to inform you that while Rita and I are very fond of you both, I’m afraid we will not be able to post your bond should either one of you follow in the footsteps of Ramses Llewelleyn and smash up a hotel room or kidnap a prize kneazle while under the influence of any sort of mind-altering substance, so please plan your celebration accordingly._
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Uncle Oscar and Aunt Rita_

Underneath this was a postscript in my mother’s neat cursive.

> _Sorry, love. Your uncle was like this when I met him. Be grateful you’re not related to him by blood and won’t risk inheriting this nonsense. xoxo, Aunt Rita._

I chuckled and passed the note back to her. “That’s Dad all right.”

“I’d forgotten about Ramses Llewellyn and the doxy dust,” said Alicia, sticking the note back in her notebook. “Though I’m not entirely clear on what Uncle Oscar thinks happens on this island.”

“He has a rich imagination, my father.” I eyed the purple notebook. “D’you need help with anything? I feel like I’ve neglected a lot of my maid of honor responsibilities.”

“Psh, you’re fine,” said Alicia. She grinned and stretched out on her lounge chair. “The nice thing about planning a mad destination wedding with ten guests total is that it does cut down on a lot of the nonsense. Assuming Lee finishes up with the things he’s supposed to do, most of the things left are preparations on the day of. I’m a free woman.” 

“Well, through Saturday evening, anyway.” 

She smiled and turned her face toward the ocean, squinting at the horizon. She was happy. There was a looseness and easiness to her features, a simple sort of peace that I’d grown to appreciate more after the War.

Almost without thought, my hand went to my right hip, right where my scar began. Alicia, with her strange sixth sense, looked away from the horizon, her smile fading slightly as her eyes went to my hand at my hip. She took a deep breath, the beginnings of a question poised on her lips when the screen door on the adjacent terrace slid open and Katie Bell bounded out.

“Hey!”

Alicia shot me a brief look that said we’d talk later before her eyes lit up and her face settled into a wide smile. “Katie!”

Katie nimbly scaled the half wall separating our terraces, her long brown hair whipping behind her in the wind. With her slim, athletic build, hair the color of black coffee, and one of the prettiest smiles I’d ever seen, Katie was the sort of person who people automatically assumed must be a model. She was a sports journalist—and quite a good one, too—and heaven help the poor sod who made the mistake of condescending to her about Quidditch. Her most well-known article—one that catapulted her career to the national stage and would eventually go on to win a Golden Quill—was a hard hitting examination of sexism in the field of sports journalism.

“There’s a gate, you maniac!” laughed Alicia as Katie clambered over the wall, knocking a few blooms off the bougainvillea.

“I’m just so excited to see you!” squealed Katie, wrapping Alicia in a tight hug. “You’re getting married in a week and I just can’t believe it.”

“Isn’t it mad?”

“It goes by so quickly, doesn’t it?” Katie pulled back from Alicia to look at her and finally seemed to register my presence. “Maggie! Oh my goodness, I didn’t even see you!”

Katie greeted me with the sort of enthusiasm that exceeded the scope of our actual relationship. That’s who Katie was: she was effusive, smiley, the sort of person whose excitement is contagious. This is not to say we weren’t friends or anything like that—we were, but we only ever saw each other in the context of Alicia. In school, it was when Alicia brought me to a party in Gryffindor Tower or took me along to their girls only Hogsmeade outings; after school, it was at Alicia’s Christmas parties or some other Alicia-related event.

I was halfway out of my chair when Katie enveloped me in a hug. “Hi Katie, it’s good to see you.”

“You’re going to knock her over, Kates,” said Alicia, laughing.

“Can you blame me?” said Katie, releasing me so I could stand up. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen Maggie. When was the last time we saw each other? It wasn’t the St. Mungo’s benefit, was it?”

“I think it must have been because you were still engaged and you were telling me about the problems you were having with that florist.”

“You’re right.” Katie made a face and groaned. “That florist. Do you know it actually got worse after the benefit? We ended up having to break the contract. I’ll tell you about it some time this week, it was utterly insane.”

“Well, Alicia showed me the photos in _Cloak and Robe_ and it looked like it was gorgeous.”

“Thank you!” Katie laughed. “I’m still surprised they ran that. A Keeper for Puddlemere United and a sports journalist aren’t exactly in the upper echelons of fame and fortune.”

“A _Golden Quill-_ winning sports journalist and advocate for women,” corrected Alicia, nudging Katie. “And Quidditch’s most promising young Keeper. You’re a power couple now! Wood and Bell, Quidditch Royalty, isn’t that what _Witch Weekly_ is calling you?”

Katie rolled her eyes. “Don’t you start on that. My dad has been utterly insufferable. Every single owl that comes to our house: Katie Bell and Oliver Wood, Quidditch Royalty.”

“Speaking of, where is your new husband?”

 “Nattering with Lee about last week’s match, obviously.”

Alicia sighed, massaging her temples. “I have told Lee to let that poor man leave work at work, but does he listen? No.”

“Oh, Oliver loves it, he’s hardly suffering.” Katie eyed the door of her room’s terrace. “It does make me wonder how they managed to get anything done when they shared that flat. I’m fairly certain they’d go on forever if they didn’t need to eat or sleep.” She leaned over the half wall of the terrace. “Oliver!”

“Yeah?” called a voice from inside the room.

“Come out here and interact like a normal human being.”

Oliver and Lee emerged from the room a few seconds later, Oliver just as handsome as he’d ever been with his slightly mussed hair and a faint smattering of stubble on his chiseled jaw. Of everyone in the wedding party, I knew Oliver the least well, owing to the fact that he was in a different house and two years ahead of me. Most of my interaction with him came a few years after graduation when he started dating Katie, and even then, it was fairly limited to an occasional chat at Alicia’s Christmas party or some such event. He was perfectly pleasant, though he hadn’t exactly abandoned his teenage obsession with Quidditch, so we didn’t always have a whole lot to discuss.

Oliver smiled as he caught sight of Alicia and like Katie, he swung himself nimbly over the half wall in lieu of using the gate, scattering more bougainvillea blooms.

“Spinnet!”

“Use the gate!” exclaimed Alicia as Oliver embraced her. “Honestly, between you and Katie, you’re going to kill that poor plant.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” said Oliver with an amused smirk.

“I’m going to write to the gossip rags and tell them that you two are flower murderers,” said Alicia, though she was smiling. Her gaze turned stern as she looked at Lee, who was still standing on the other terrace. “Lee, don’t you dare hop that wall, I can’t have the death of this poor plant on my conscience.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, my love,” he said, giving her the sort of smile that always made her eyes soften just a little, no matter what. “I’ve actually got a few things to finish up, but I’ll pop back over when Fred arrives.”

“Thanks, love,” she said, smiling. Lee blew Alicia a kiss as he went back inside.

Oliver seemed to notice me for the first time. “Maggie. Good to see you again.”

“Hi Oliver.” We exchanged the awkward hug of two people who only sort of knew each other through third parties. “Congratulations on the wedding, it looked like it was beautiful.”

“Thanks, it went off quite well.”

“And don’t forget their recent ascension to Quidditch Royalty,” said Alicia, failing to hide a smile.

“She hates that,” said Oliver in a stage whisper as Katie let out a dramatic groan.

“That’s what makes it fun,” Alicia whispered back.

Katie and Oliver soon left us to go settle in and unpack, promising to meet back on our terrace (and use the gate) to discuss dinner plans once they’d settled in. Alicia and I made ourselves at home on the lounge chairs on the terrace, me with my book and Alicia stretched out with her arm draped over her eyes. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool and though I was loath to admit it, our time in Las Ballenas so far had been pretty well near perfect.

A little more than a half hour later, I heard a door open. Two terraces down, I could see Lee emerge from his room followed shortly by Fred Weasley.

I’d seen Fred and his twin George intermittently since the War ended and every time was a bit jarring. Before the War, they were utterly identical, to the point that most teachers had given up on trying to tell them apart. Like most Gryffindors, they regularly toed the line between brave and foolhardy; unlike most Gryffindors, they did this with all the subtlety of a firecracker in a library or a tornado in a china shop. They were funny, handsome, and popular; fancying one of the Weasley twins was common enough that it was practically a rite of passage.

Things changed after the War.

Their Gryffindor courage had claimed from each of them a pound of flesh. George had lost most of his left ear in the Battle of the Seven Potters; Fred had very nearly died in an explosion during the Battle of Hogwarts, and the start of an angry red scar now peeked over the collar of his shirt, ending at the hollow of his throat. They were—in the most heartbreaking way—no longer identical. They were still funny, handsome, and well-liked; they still had their joke shop in Diagon Alley. But it was always a little sad to see them, George with his missing ear and Fred looking a little more sad and haunted, even when he was smiling.

It was, in a way, a sharp reminder of my own scars.

Goosebumps prickled along my forearms despite the balmy heat of the day and I barely resisted the urge to place my hand to my hip. Instead, I turned my eyes back to my book.

Alicia stirred on the chair beside me. “What’s the time?”

“Dunno.”

She stretched, looking around. “Well, it must be after four. Fred’s here.” She waved in the general direction of Lee’s terrace. “I think they’re coming over.” 

I set my book on the table and stretched as I stood, the stone of the terrace cool against my toes.

“Maggie Carlyle, as I live and breathe,” said Fred, stepping onto the terrace. We exchanged a brief hug. “It’s been a while.”

“Good to see you, Fred.”

Fred looked pointedly at Alicia, who was still lounging on her chair. “You’re not even going to stand up to say hello to me, are you, Spinnet?”

Alicia beamed at him. “I wouldn’t want you to get used to it.”

“Cheeky.” He leaned down to hug her. “I’ll hug you anyway because it’s your wedding week.”

“Are George and Angie here?”

“Yeah,” said Fred as he sat down in one of the unoccupied chairs.

“How’s she doing?”

“Vomiting spectacularly last I checked.”

Alicia winced. “Poor girl. I was hoping the Portkey wouldn’t make her sick.” 

“I don’t think it was the Portkey so much as the fact that she’s three months pregnant and having her morning sickness in the afternoons.”

Alicia frowned. “Why didn’t George book an earlier Portkey?”

Fred chuckled. “That has been pointed out to him several times. Loudly.”

“Good to know that pregnancy hasn’t changed her,” said Alicia smiling.

“Katie and Wood arrive?”

“About half an hour before you,” said Lee. “Mate, you’re not going to _believe_ what he was saying about the match—”

“I’m declaring a moratorium on Quidditch talk,” interrupted Alicia. “There are other things in this world.”

“You’re no fun,” said Lee.

“You knew that when you proposed.”

“Is the maid of honor the one that’s meant to be the referee or is it the best man?” Fred asked me.

“I think we’re meant to share the responsibility,” I said. “You take Lee and I’ll handle Alicia.”

Alicia arched an eyebrow, folding her arms across her chest. “Lee, I think we’ve made a mistake, they’ve already ganged up on us.”

“Should’ve gone with George,” sighed Lee.

Fred grinned. “That’s what happens when you flip a coin.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that he was joking.

“So I think we’re going to wait for everyone to get settled and then decide what to do about dinner,” said Alicia. “I thought that we might want to have a bit of an early night tonight and then be well rested for tomorrow.” Alicia looked at me, her eyes glimmering. “There are eight nightclubs I’d like to visit.”

“You’re not funny,” I said, sending her the sternest look I could muster.

“Not much for nightclubs, are you, Carlyle?” said Fred, grinning.

“She’s a Hufflepuff through and through, our Maggie,” said Alicia, winking at me. I made a face at her and she smiled. “I was actually thinking tomorrow might be a good day for the beach. Our parents arrive in the morning, so we can pop out to say hello to them.”

“I’d be amenable to that,” said Fred. He looked at me. “So what’s keeping you out of trouble these days, Maggie? I thought I saw you at the Enchanted Onion a few weeks back.”

This was a question that I dreaded because I didn’t have a particularly satisfactory answer. The truth was that I was trudging through the same rut that I’d been in since the War had ended. Before the Battle of Hogwarts, I’d been looking at pursuing the additional certifications that I’d need to be an independent Potioneer.

After the Battle of Hogwarts, that particular ambition seemed distant and strange. It was the ambition of a girl who didn’t have hidden scars, a girl who still had a brother, a girl who could leave her house and not have it feel like a herculean effort. The girl that I’d become was a bit more damaged and scared. My plans changed accordingly.

“Still waiting tables at the Enchanted Onion,” I said brightly, hoping that my smile reached my eyes. “It’s not glamorous, but it pays the bills.”

It might have just been my imagination, but I thought for a moment that Fred’s eyes turned a little serious, like he had a notion that there was more to it than my breezy answer. But a split second later, that little glimmer was gone.

“’S honest work,” he said, grinning. “No shame in that.”

“Seems like the shop is doing well,” I said, hoping this would change the subject. “It always looks busy when I walk by on my tea break."

Lee sighed. “You never stop by to visit though, do you, Mags? Not even to see your favorite soon-to-be cousin-in-law, toiling away at his ledger.” 

“You don’t have a ledger and you barely use your desk,” said Alicia, rolling her eyes. 

“I can’t very well negotiate new contracts locked up in my office, now can I?”

The sound of an opening screen door on the terrace next to us punctuated Lee’s question. Angelina Johnson—now Angelina Weasley—stepped out onto the terrace, followed shortly by George Weasley. 

“Ange!” Alicia leapt to her feet. Angelina’s face lit up and she darted from her terrace to ours, meeting Alicia in an enthusiastic embrace.

“Do you see how it is?” said Fred to me, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “She gets up to say hello to _them._ ”

“You should file a grievance,” I said very seriously.

“Maggie, it’s so good to see you!” Angelina was approaching me now. I hadn’t seen her since she’d gotten pregnant, but she looked good—there was a slight hint of a bump at her waist and her skin was glowing.

“Hi, congratulations!” I said as she drew me into a hug. “You look wonderful.”

“You’re sweet,” said Angelina. “I feel rather grotesque at the moment, but overall it’s been good.” Her expression became stern as she fixed her gaze on her husband. “Today’s travel excluded.”

George was either very foolish or had a very finely tuned sense of Angelina’s mood because he merely grinned at her and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. “I like to think of my occasional lapses in common sense as a charming quirk that made you fall in love with me.”

Angelina sighed. “I was drunk when he first asked me on a date,” she said to me. 

“But not when I proposed,” said George cheerily. He looked at me and grinned. “Hi Maggie, lovely to see you. Were you expecting to hear so much about our marriage in these first five minutes?”

I laughed and we exchanged a brief hug. “Not exactly, but it’s good to see you. And congratulations on the baby.” 

“Thank you,” said George. “First of twelve, you know how we Weasleys are.”

Angelina gave him a look that could have melted steel, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way that he slung an arm around her and planted a kiss on her temple. 

Katie and Oliver soon joined us on the terrace and there were more exclamations and hugs to be exchanged, more small talk to be had.

And herein lay the challenging part of being in this bridal party, and one of the more difficult parts of spending time with Alicia’s friends: they were _Alicia’s_ friends. They weren’t intentionally exclusive or unwelcoming or anything like that, but they had their own inside jokes, their own particular rhythm to their banter and teasing. I knew enough context to be able to follow along just enough so that I mostly knew what was going on, but not enough to feel like I truly was a part of the group. 

Fred, George, and Oliver were going back and forth with some convoluted story about a Quidditch match during our fifth year when Alicia caught my eye and gave me a knowing smile, bumping her shoulder against mine. That was the thing about Alicia: for all her Gryffindor bravery, there was just as large a part of her that was thoughtful and sweet. In school, she had been one of the more popular girls in our year and being on the Quidditch team and running in the same circles as Harry Potter had given her a kind of social cachet that I couldn’t quite match with such bona fides as Potions Club President and Quidditch spectator.

But popular as she was, Alicia never used that as an excuse to lose sight of me. She brought me to parties in Gryffindor Tower, she invited me to Hogsmeade with Angelina and Katie, she insisted that we have dinner together at least once a week. At her post-Hogwarts parties, she showed up the moment it looked like I might be alone, pulling me by the wrist and saying that there was someone she wanted me to meet.

So when she bumped her shoulder against mine, there was a part of me that relaxed just a little bit, a part of me that knew that even though I was out of my element, Alicia would be there to guide me.

_Perhaps this won't be so bad after all,_ I thought.  _I hope._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I don’t own anything and I’m not making money from this.
> 
> A/N: I told myself I wasn’t going to post this until I had more chapters written but I kind of got super excited about it and now I’ve decided to ignore my own advice, so we’ll see how that goes.
> 
> Las Ballenas is not a real place, but it’s loosely based on the island of Ibiza.
> 
> Please let me know what you think! I love hearing from people.


	2. Coffee

I used to be a morning person. It was easy to be a morning person before the War, when sleep came swiftly and predictably and dreams didn’t always turn into nightmares. I liked getting up early; I liked having a head start on my day. It was the sort of thing that I never expected to change in any significant fashion.

But it did, of course.

After the War, mornings became harder. I woke up exhausted more often than not. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night, most often by a nightmare but sometimes for no reason at all. Sometimes I’d fall asleep too late; other times I’d wake up at three or four in the morning and not be able to fall back asleep.

And sometimes, I would have a normal night of sleep. No nightmares. No waking up. This was becoming more frequent the more years I put between myself and the Battle of Hogwarts, but it still wasn’t quite often enough to feel like anything other than a minor miracle when it did happen.

There were, of course, magical solutions that I could try. Both my parents and Alicia had been campaigning for this for as long as I’d been sleeping poorly. And I did try them at first—Calming Draughts, tinctures for dreamless sleep, the lot of them—but I found that I couldn’t continue using them on a regular basis, as they left me feeling a bit groggy and sluggish the following day.

There was a second truth, though, that I kept to myself: there was a part of me that felt that this was the punishment that I deserved for my role in what had happened at the Battle of Hogwarts.

I knew this was problematic. I knew that it wasn’t a truth so much as it was the warped conclusion of a broken heart and a textbook case of survivor’s guilt. If I’d been reading this account in a novel, I would be sighing irritably and muttering, “Just _tell_ someone!”

But I didn’t. The insidious mantra persisted uninterrupted: _Evan was dead because he’d gone after me. If not for me, he might still be alive._

So instead, I developed a rather strong dependency on coffee and held that terrible secret close to my heart.

The first night in Las Ballenas, I woke up before the dream got bad. In the dream, I was sprinting down the corridor and Evan was chasing after me because he knew I couldn’t stun worth a damn when I got upset and my hands had already been shaking when I’d taken off running. Evan, once again, thinking of me before he thought of himself, putting me before him without a second thought; me, too blind and selfish to slow down for thirty seconds and think about the stupid, stupid thing I was about to do. 

I was running down the corridor and leading Evan to his death.

I woke up with a start, my heart pounding in my ears as though I’d just sprinted the length of the corridor. I looked at the clock on the bedside table. Half past two.

Even here in the world’s most comfortable bed, I couldn’t quite escape my demons.

I stared at the ceiling for a while and tried to do the meditation exercises that Mum had read about in a Muggle magazine. When that didn’t work, I tiptoed out onto the terrace with my book and read until that sprint down the corridor began to fade into memory and my eyes began to grow heavy. I crept back into bed a little after four.

I woke again around half past six as Alicia was collecting her clothes from the wardrobe.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” she asked quietly when she noticed me stirring.

“It’s fine,” I mumbled. “I’ll drop back off in a moment.”

Alicia frowned and sat down next to me on the bed. “Did you wake up last night?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“From half past two to about four.”

She sighed. “I told you to wake me if that happened.”

I would never wake Alicia, at least not if I could help it. This was burden I had to bear alone. Alicia didn’t deserve to lose sleep over my demons, not when she’d been the one to save me, the one who’d kept my parents from losing both of their children.

I couldn’t tell her this, of course. “’s not your problem if I can’t sleep.”

“I could keep you company at least.”

“It’s fine, really.”

She sighed again, her hand coming to rest on my shoulder. “Oh, Maggie-Mac.” This was a nickname I only heard when she was worried about me, a callback to our childhood when things were easier. She squeezed my shoulder and I felt the bed shift as she got up. “I’m going to shower. Go back to sleep.”

Alicia takes notoriously long showers, so by the time she was done, I’d managed to sleep a little longer and I was feeling slightly more awake. I took a quick shower—or quick by Alicia’s standards—and when I emerged twenty minutes later, she had donned a green swimsuit and matching sarong.

“Ready for the beach?” she asked, shaking out a beach towel and folding it into a neat square.

“I’m ready for coffee,” I said, yawning.

“You’re always ready for coffee,” she said with a wry smile. “I’m going to pop down to the lobby—they’ve got a little breakfast setup. I’ll see if they’ve got coffee. Do you want anything to eat?”

I rummaged in the dresser for my swimsuit. “Just a banana or something is fine.”

“All right, I’ll be back in a moment.” Alicia left the room and I went into the bathroom to change.

My swimsuit was a black one piece with white polka dots and a sweetheart neckline—the sort of thing that’s meant to look like a vintage piece from the forties. I’d bought it just before we left. It was the sort of purchase that I had overthought several times over. I didn’t want people to look at me and know that I was trying to cover my scars and I thought if I bought an objectively cute swimsuit, the fact that it was a one piece wouldn’t occur to people.

Like I said: I had overthought it. Most likely, no one would even think about it. 

I was careful to turn away from the mirror when I stripped down in the bathroom. It wasn’t that I couldn’t bear to look at myself—I could—I just knew from past experience that if I didn’t turn away, I was likely to linger, staring at myself in the mirror, trying different angles to see if the scarring looked better under a different light (it never did).

And eventually, my mind would wander back to that day in May and Evan’s lifeless eyes…

It wasn’t the sort of exercise that led to anything productive. It was easier, in the end, to turn away. I stepped into my swimsuit and pulled it over my hips, only turning to the mirror when I slid my arms into the straps.

It was a nice swimsuit. I looked good. For a moment, I allowed myself to pretend that I had chosen it because of what it enhanced, not because of what it hid.

The moment passed. I turned away.

I was fundamentally unprepared for the beach, I was realizing as I opened my dresser drawers. I didn’t have a matching sarong like Alicia or an attractive cover up to wear over my suit. This was probably something I should have thought about before I left. This was probably something that I should have thought about instead of worrying about the hidden meanings that people could possibly extract from my swimsuit choice. Eventually, I decided on a pair of white shorts, hoping that it looked at least sort of intentional and not like a last minute solution. 

Alicia came back as I was preparing to slather myself in sunscreen.

“I’ve good news and bad news,” she said, handing me a banana. “The good news is that they had bananas.”

My heart sank. “They didn’t have coffee?”

“They are out. Or at least I think that’s what the man was telling me. My español is not so bueno, so there could be more to it than what I was able to glean.” She made a sympathetic face. “Sorry. You could try a Wakefulness Charm, maybe? Or we can see if there’s a shop nearby.”

I sighed and began peeling my banana. I preferred coffee to magical solutions. I liked the taste of coffee, for one. I liked the ritual of it. I liked that it gave my hands something to do. I liked how it stung my lips and tongue when it was slightly too hot. It felt like an anchor, especially the morning after a particularly rough night.

“Maybe.” I took a bite of the banana. “I’ll see how long I can manage without.” 

“All right.” She picked up my bottle of sunscreen and frowned. “SunShield? Isn’t this the stuff they sell to vampires?”

“Dad insisted,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I think he genuinely believes I’m going to burst into flames.”

“Typical.” She set the bottle back down. “Lee and Fred are awake. I told them we’d meet them on the beach in twenty minutes or so.”

“What about the others?”

“George and Angelina are stirring. We are ninety percent certain that Katie and Wood are shagging, so who knows when they’ll be ready.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Did I really need to know that?”

“I didn’t want to either.” Alicia shrugged. “You can be united with the rest of us in this horrible knowledge.”

“Ugh.” I finished the last bite of my banana. “Have you eaten by the way?”

“Had some sort of pastry with strawberries while I was talking to Fred and Lee.” She frowned. “I suppose I should have had something healthier given the fact that I’m meant to fit into a dress by the end of the week, but in my defense, it was a very good pastry.”

“You don’t have to justify pastry consumption to me, ever.”

“Thank you for your support. It means a lot.” She glanced at the clock. “We ought to start getting our things sorted.”

I slathered myself in SunShield, which left me smelling strongly of eucalyptus, before pulling on the pair of shorts I’d selected earlier. I’d at least had enough foresight to remember to bring a beach bag, so I had somewhere to stash my towel, sunscreen, water bottle, wand, book, and sunglasses. Alicia puttered around, filling up her own bag and applying a generous layer of sunscreen.

“Ready?”

“Think so.”

I hitched my bag on my shoulder and we walked out from our terrace and onto the beach. The sand was soft between my toes and a pleasant breeze tickled my face. The ocean was again that impossible shade of aquamarine and the sky was bright blue and flecked with fat white clouds that looked like tufts of cotton.

Maybe Las Ballenas wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Maybe.

The beach was fairly empty this early and we were able to find a spot not too far from the shore that was partly shaded by a large palm tree. We spread out a blue and white striped blanket on the sand, setting our bags on the edges to keep the wind from getting at it.

“Right,” said Alicia as I plopped down on the blanket. “I’m going to help Lee with the rest of our things. You’re in charge of holding our spot.”

“Whenever you need someone to sit around and not move, I’m your girl,” I said, giving her a mock salute. She stuck out her tongue and trudged away. I took my book out from my bag and flipped it open.

About ten minutes later, a shadow fell over me. I looked up and found Fred, carrying a travel coffee cup in each hand.

“I was told you were in search of coffee,” he said, handing one of the cups to me.

“You are an _angel_ ,” I said fervently, taking the cup from him and inhaling deeply. Nothing had ever smelled more glorious.

He chuckled, sitting down next to me, shrugging out of his backpack. “I would’ve brought you an entire samovar if I’d known that’s how you’d react.”

“I have strong feelings about coffee.” I took a sip. “This is quite good.”

“It’s from that little shop just across the road.”

“How much do I owe you?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh go on, let me pay you back. I would have fallen asleep on the beach without this, you’ve saved me quite a lot of embarrassment.”

He grinned. “I couldn’t let that happen, now could I? Not the week of Lee and Alicia’s wedding, that’s no time for a scandal.” He took a sip of his own coffee. “Really, it’s no trouble.”

“Well, you’ll have to let me buy you a coffee by the end of the holiday,” I said, taking another sip.

“I suppose I can allow that.”

We were both quiet for a moment, sipping our coffees and watching the ocean. It wasn’t exactly an awkward silence, but it wasn’t an entirely comfortable one, either. I’d never really spent any time alone with Fred and I found myself feeling a bit nervous, trying to come up with something interesting to say.

“Sleep all right?” I asked after a moment, wincing internally. Not exactly the most exciting topic.

Fred shrugged. “Well enough.” There was a beat of silence. “You?”

“Not really,” I said, before I could think about it. Another internal wince. _Getting into your personal issues stemming from the War. Excellent move, Maggie, you’re like the Oscar Wilde of awkward conversations._

“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Time change?”

“No, I just haven’t slept very well since…” I trailed off, clearing my throat rather awkwardly. Fred looked at me, tilting his head to the side. “Sorry,” I said, taking another sip of coffee. “Generally, I don’t bring up the War at—” I looked at his watch. “—nine o’clock in the morning, but you’ve caught me before I’ve had my coffee and I’m afraid I’ll be a bit of an idiot until about half past when my brain finishes waking up.”

He gave me a strange sort of smile, like he didn’t quite know what to make of me. “No need to apologize.”

“You should at least have had your coffee and perhaps a few glasses of wine before you have to listen to me talk about the War,” I said, trying to seem more casual and less embarrassed than I felt. “So for your sake, I’m changing the subject. What about the others? Are George and Angelina awake yet?”

His smile turned into a full-on grin, but he didn’t try to redirect the conversation. “George was in the shower last I checked, so that’s progress.”

“And Katie and Oliver?”

“Still shagging, as far as I know.”

My lips twitched. “Well, I suppose you have to applaud their endurance.”

Fred snorted. “Knowing Wood, he’s likely got a very grueling training regimen. Cream of wheat for breakfast, a banana with every meal, no caffeine or alcohol, twenty pushups before and after the act.”

I made a face. “There’s an image I could have done without.”

His lips curled into a sly grin. “What? Oliver doing pushups in the nude post-coitus?”

I gave an exaggerated shudder. “Any of it.”

“Well, I couldn’t very well suffer alone, now could I?”

“Mmm…you could have,” I said, raising an eyebrow at him. “It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.”

He laughed. “I think you know I’m no gentleman, Maggie Carlyle.”

I took another sip of coffee. “I’m optimistic about your eventual reformation.”

“Oh, you’re going to be so terribly, terribly disappointed,” he said, shaking his head.

“I believe in you.”

“You believe in what?” Alicia had arrived, carrying a large picnic hamper, followed by Lee, who had a sun umbrella and several more tote bags.

“Fred’s eventual reformation into a proper gentleman.”

Lee laughed. “I think you’re going to be horribly disappointed.”

“That’s what I said,” said Fred, shrugging and taking a sip of his coffee.

“Did you bring enough stuff?” I asked, eying the stack of bags as Lee set up the umbrella.

“You’ll thank me later,” said Alicia, setting the hamper down on the sand and flopping down beside me.

“Yes, Maggie, when a surprise Potions competition breaks out and you need a set of scales and a full-sized cauldron, you won’t be laughing at Alicia then,” said Fred, failing to hide a smile.

“Sod off,” said Alicia cheerfully, kicking some sand in Fred’s direction and getting most of it on my legs.

“I will not be caught in the crossfire of this,” I warned her, brushing off my legs.

She flicked more sand at me. “It’s one of your maid of honor responsibilities.”

“I don’t recall agreeing to that.”

“Should’ve read the contract more carefully,” said Alicia with a shrug.

“Ah, but you are forgetting one important fact,” said Fred to Alicia. “We established yesterday that Maggie and I have turned on you and Lee.”

I nodded. “I also swore an oath of loyalty to Fred a few minutes ago because he brought me coffee.”

Fred looked at Alicia very solemnly. “I’m afraid that we cannot ignore such a blatant act of aggression. We will take action in the form of bothering you until our deaths.”

“Lee,” whined Alicia, turning back to Lee and pouting. “Maggie and Fred are being mean to me.”

“She did kick sand at both of us,” I said. “Ask yourself: does she deserve your sympathy?”

Lee plopped down beside Alicia. “Hmm. Argument between my intended, her cousin and best friend, and one of my best mates.” He regarded us thoughtfully, chewing his lower lip. “Think it’s best if I stay out of this one.”

“Think very carefully about which one of us you’ll be sharing a bed with for the rest of your life,” said Alicia, narrowing her eyes.

Lee studied her for a moment. “Have I mentioned that you are very beautiful this morning?”

Alicia stared at him expressionlessly. “Try again.”

“I love you?”

“Ah, I recognize this,” said Fred. “This is the patented George Weasley Method for Marital Conflict Resolution.”

Lee grinned. “He had some useful suggestions.”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” said Alicia, rolling her eyes.

“Speaking of, where are they?”

“They claimed they were going to be down in ten minutes and that was five minutes ago.”

“So…” Fred looked at his watch. “Seventeen minutes from now, at the earliest.”

“Probably.”

“I left a note for Katie and Oliver,” said Alicia. “I hope this isn’t a preview of the entire week, they’ll miss the bloody wedding if they keep at it.”

“Wood keeps a rigorous schedule,” said Fred nonchalantly, causing me to nearly spit out a mouthful of coffee.

Alicia eyed the two of us. “I’ve a feeling that’s some sort of disgusting inside joke that you came up with while we were away.”

“You would be correct,” said Fred, grinning.

“Then I don’t want to know.” Alicia peered over her sunglasses at Fred. “And don’t tell Lee either because he’ll just tell me about it later.”

Lee shrugged. “Probably.”

“Don’t worry, love, it will be a terrible secret that Maggie and I will take to our graves,” said Fred solemnly, winking at me when Alicia turned away.

I knew that he wasn’t flirting with me, but my stomach flipped like he was. Fred was just handsome enough that sometimes you couldn’t help but mistake a friendly gesture for a flirty one, even if it was only for a second or two. George had a similar effect. I’d taken an arm’s length and grain of salt approach to them in school in an effort to avoid fooling myself into thinking their charm was indicative of anything more. Evidently, I’d fallen a bit out of practice in the intervening years, judging from the way my stomach dropped and the flush that was threatening to prickle at my throat. I took a sip of my coffee. I’d need to be more careful, especially in a place like Las Ballenas. The last thing I needed was an embarrassing rejection on top of everything else going on in my life.

As Fred predicted, it was another seventeen minutes before George and Angelina made their way down to the beach. Since I was now equating functional adulthood and personal responsibility with ownership of a cover-up or a sarong that was appropriate for the beach, the first thing that I noticed was that Angelina was wearing a very pretty coral colored maxi-dress that draped elegantly over her tiny belly.

_I need to get my act together. Maybe there’s a shop in town that sells cover-ups._

Lee looked pointedly at his watch. “Ten minutes, eh?”

Angelina huffed as she situated herself under the umbrella. “I can’t help it if George moves like someone cast _Arresto Momentum_ on him in his sleep.”

George was unrepentant as he settled himself next to Angelina. “It takes effort to look this good. Fred got here early and look at him.”

Fred shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee. “I was making a personal sacrifice in order to perform a minor act of heroism.”

“He brought me coffee,” I said, looking at George. “And I did swear an oath of loyalty to him as thanks, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to fight you to defend his honor. Let’s have at it.”

“Ah, but I can buy your loyalty with this amazing offer of—” George turned out the pockets of his swim trunks. “—half of a broken Sneakoscope.”

Alicia frowned. “Why on earth—”

Angelina shook her head. “Better not to ask. The explanation will only leave you more confused than you were to begin with. This is the most valuable lesson I’ve learned from our first three years of marriage.”

George grinned, pecking Angelina on the side of her forehead. “Sharp as always, my love.” He held out the Sneakoscope to me. “What d’you say, Maggie? Is this enough to outbid my brother on your loyalty?”

I sipped thoughtfully at my coffee. “This is a very tempting offer, but I’m afraid you’ve critically underestimated how important coffee is to me.”

“Ah, bollocks,” said George as Fred pumped a fist.

“You could probably buy my loyalty for a cup of coffee,” said Angelina. She sighed wistfully. “I miss coffee. And soft cheeses.”

“I don’t have any soft cheeses, but I can let you smell my coffee and you can have a cup vicariously,” I said, extending my cup to her.

Angelina smiled widely as she took the cup from my hands. “I was going to ask but I thought it might come off strange.”

I scoffed. “Not at all. I am completely sympathetic.”

She inhaled deeply. “That smells divine.” She took a few more deep breaths before handing the cup back to me. “George, I’m changing my loyalty to Maggie and Fred. After all, it is partly your fault that I can’t have coffee.”

“Well, this morning has taken an unpleasant turn,” said George, frowning.

Fred shrugged. “Sorry, mate. You know how it is: you’ve got the looks, I’ve got the charm.”

“That is true,” conceded George with a sigh.

“Did you happen to see Katie and Oliver before you left?” asked Alicia.

“Katie was out on her terrace looking sweaty and sated,” said Angelina, a wry smile tugging at the corners of her lips, eyebrow arching.

Fred nudged me. “Told you. ‘S all that cream of wheat.”

I nearly spat out my coffee again. “You need to stop doing that while I have coffee in my mouth.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” he asked, grinning.

“What’s this about cream of wheat?” asked Angelina.

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Maggie and Fred have some sort of disgusting inside joke that I truly do not want to hear about.”

Angelina made a face. “Think I’ll add my name to that list as well.”

“I’m always amenable to hearing something disgusting,” said George cheerfully, propping his chin up on his hands and doing his best to look very attentive and earnest.

Angelina swatted at him playfully. “Please don’t tell him, he’ll be insufferable about it.” She steadfastly ignored the resulting pout from George. “Anyway, she said they should be down within the hour.”

“Barring any other carnal delays,” added George.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” said Angelina with a weary sort of sigh. “Go dip your toes in the water, see what the temperature’s like.”

George grinned and kissed her on the cheek before rising to his feet. “As my love commands.”

Alicia nudged Lee. “Go with him and tell me if it’s warm enough.”

Lee raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes. I’m delegating this responsibility on account of laziness.”

“Welcome to marriage,” quipped George.

“George, hand me my bag, I need my wand,” said Angelina, the grim set of her mouth betraying another agenda.

“Have I mentioned how beautiful you look today?” said George.

Angelina’s eyes narrowed. “You’re on thin ice, George.”

George grinned, again completely unperturbed by Angelina’s stormy look. “And yet you love me anyway.” He bent down to kiss her and she swatted him away, though there was a warm sort of sparkle in her eye. He straightened up. “Right. Lee and I will be off now. Fred, come along, let Angelina have a chance to complain about me properly.”

“Can’t argue with that,” said Fred, vanishing his coffee cup and standing up. The three of them ambled off down the beach together.

“He’s an idiot,” sighed Angelina, something like a smile tugging at her lips, her hand resting on her belly. “But I suppose I’m rather fond of him.”

“Love’s rather funny like that,” said Alicia. She glanced at me as I stifled a yawn. “How are you feeling, Mags? Did the coffee help?”

“Getting there,” I said, taking another sip. “Did you tell Fred to do this?”

“I mentioned it, he offered.”

Angelina looked at me, eyes softening in sympathy. “Long night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t sleep as well as I used to.”

This was the strange, coded language we sometimes used about the War: we left things unsaid. We said _before_ and _used to_ and _like it was_ as a way to soften the blow of talking about wounds that were still healing and losses that would always feel fresh.

“Yeah…” said Angelina, her mouth turning downward as she looked toward the shoreline. “George doesn’t either. Fred, too, from what I’m told. Possibly worse than George.”

Even though the War had wormed its way into the cracks in my armor, there was always a small part of me that was surprised when I learned it had done the same to others as well. This was especially the case for Fred and George—before the War, they were practically invincible to worry, to the point that if they were worried about something, it was a clue that you were dealing with life-and-death levels of seriousness.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, and truly I was.

“I wish they’d talk to someone about it,” said Angelina. “I mean, George has me, but Fred…” She trailed off, her eyes looking sad. “It’s the sort of thing that gets lonely, I think.”

Angelina was more right than I’d ever admit out loud. 

Alicia nudged me. “Did we not just have a conversation about this this morning?” She looked at Angelina and shook her head. “I’ve told her to wake me up when she can’t sleep. She never does.”

I didn’t really want to delve too deeply into this topic, so I merely rolled my eyes and poked Alicia in the shoulder. “You need your rest. You’re meant to be a beautiful bride on Saturday.”

“And what about you? I can’t very well have you looking like the crypt keeper in the photos."

I shrugged and vanished my empty cup of coffee. “It’s a tradition. The maid of honor always looks like death in order to frighten the evil spirits who want to steal the bride.”

Alicia sighed, turning to Angelina. “Do you see what I put up with?”

Angelina smiled. “I’ve encountered similar stubbornness on this topic.” 

“Oh, let’s talk about something happier,” I suggested. “We’re on holiday and it’s gorgeous out. No need to dwell on my problems. Angelina, you’re creating an entire human being and I know absolutely nothing about her. Or him.”

Alicia scowled. “Oh, that’s not fair, you’re baiting her, changing the topic to the baby.”

Angelina smiled. “And I’m taking the bait. We don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl, actually. George desperately wants to know. I want to keep it a surprise. He thinks I’ll eventually give into curiosity, but I think that’s mostly projection on his part.”

“What sort of names are you thinking about?” 

“Well, I’ve got an entire list of names that George has suggested as a joke.” She thought for a moment. “I think he may have offered more joke ones than serious ones at this point.”

“Wasn’t Beauregard one of them?” asked Alicia.

“Oddly, that was one that he genuinely likes for some reason.” Angelina shook her head. “That turned into a bit of a row because I thought it was a joke and he got cross about it because I laughed right in his face.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. My brother—” My voice caught in my throat, the way it often did when I tried to talk about him, even all these years later. “—he didn’t have a name for nearly three days. My parents eventually worked it out.”

Alicia tapped her foot against mine; if Angelina noticed the sudden roughness in my voice, she was kind enough to pretend she didn’t notice. The three of us were quiet for a moment, watching Fred, George, and Lee. They were standing ankle deep in the water and had devised some sort of game that involved flinging rocks into the ocean.

“Imagine you’re a rock,” said Alicia after a moment, “and it has taken you millions of years rolling along the ocean floor but you finally make it to the shore, only to be chucked back into the ocean by one of those idiots.”

“Nature is cruel like that,” said Angelina as Lee wound his hand back and threw a rock. It skipped four times and the three of them shouted.

“Was that a cheer or a jeer?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” said Alicia, frowning at the shoreline. “I’m sure that they’ve come up with a very elaborate set of rules for this game in the brief time that they’ve been down there.”

“Oh no doubt,” said Angelina.

“Good morning!” Katie plopped down next to Angelina. It was difficult to ascertain at that moment whether her cheerful mood was a natural product of her personality or a product of her activities this morning. Perhaps it was both.

Katie, I noticed, had a pretty white cover-up with a crochet detail that looked a little like lace.

_I’ve really got to get it together._

“Morning.” Alicia nodded at Oliver. “They’re chucking rocks into the water, if that is of interest to you.” 

“Excellent,” said Oliver brightly.

“It really doesn’t take much to make you happy, does it?” said Alicia.

Oliver grinned as he started making his way toward the shore. “To be fair, I have made a career out of chucking things around. I’m an easy man to please.”

“ _Speaking_ of easy to please…” said Angelina as soon as he was out of earshot, her lips curling into a wicked sort of smile. “ _You_ certainly took your time this morning, Ms. Bell.”

Katie rolled her eyes but her cheeks went slightly pink. “Oh, go on. We’re at a very romantic hotel on a very gorgeous beach. Don’t pretend like you and George haven’t had a go of it.” She directed her gaze at Alicia. “Or you and Lee.”

“You know perfectly well that I’m sharing a room with Maggie until the wedding,” said Alicia primly. “I shall be as pure as the driven snow for our wedding night.”

I snorted. “Speaking as a former flatmate who has had the unfortunate experience of being in the same building when you’ve forgotten to use a Silencing Charm, I can say that this is decidedly not true.”

Katie winced. “Alicia. You didn’t.”

“It was _one time_!” protested Alicia, flinging her hands in the air. 

“It was more than that.”

“It was _two times_.” She frowned. “Maybe three. Anyway, the point is that she cast a Silencing Charm on her own room to keep out the noise. It’s not like she heard the whole thing.”

“I heard enough,” I said, arching an eyebrow at her.

“You know, I don’t know why I’m defending myself when Katie’s the one who was indulging all of her insatiable carnal appetites this morning.”

Katie rolled her eyes again. “I refuse to apologize for what I do in the privacy of my own hotel room.”

“Well, that’s vague. Now I just have a lot of follow up questions,” said Angelina.

“Some things in life must remain a mystery.” She flashed Angelina a bright smile. “Changing the subject now: how’s the water?”

“Haven’t been in yet,” said Angelina. “I sent George to go test it and somehow that happened.” She gestured at the shore, where George was in the process of attempting to skip a rock with his back turned. It was going predictably poorly.

“Sounds about right,” said Katie.

The four of us winced as George threw a stone and very nearly hit Fred.

Alicia sighed. “I’m going to have to be the grump that puts a stop to this, aren’t I? They’re all meant to be in my wedding photos at the end of the week and I don’t want them all to have head injuries.”

“That’s probably for the best,” said Angelina. “It’s only a matter of time before one of them remembers that they’ve got magic at their disposal and then we’ll have enchanted flying rocks to contend with.”

“I think Lee’s getting out his wand now,” said Katie, squinting at the shoreline.

“Right on schedule.” Alicia put both fingers to her lips and let out an ear-piercing whistle. “Oi! Lee Jordan, don’t even think about it!”

Lee shouted something back at Alicia, but it was lost over the sound of the waves.

“No magic!” she shouted back at him.

The four of them seemed to consider this for a moment before collectively flashing a thumbs down and booing.

“Are they _booing_ me?” demanded Alicia.

“Seems like it,” said Katie.

A grim sort of expression came over Alicia’s face and she sighed. “Right. Who wants to help me dunk one or more of those idiots into the ocean?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your kudos and subscriptions! It truly makes my day to hear from you! 
> 
> I neglected to mention this in my first chapter, but here’s what you can expect from me as far as updates: generally a new chapter takes me between two to four weeks to write, depending on what’s going on in my life, how long the new chapter is, and how difficult the new chapter is being. I generally try to include a rough estimate of when the next chapter will be up whenever I post a new chapter. I also try to keep my bio on my profile updated, so if something happens, you can find that information there. So that being said, I’m hoping to have Chapter 3 posted by early to mid August 2018 at the very latest. 
> 
> Shameless plug: while you are waiting for updates on this, check out Playing With Fire, another Fred/OC fic that I’m writing.
> 
> One small correction: I realized as I was researching some vegetation for the Mediterranean region that bougainvillea blooms from July through September, not in May. I’m going to retroactively pretend that it’s magic bougainvillea that blooms year round. Problem solved!


	3. Chicken

As it turned out, dunking one or more of the aforementioned idiots into the ocean was a rather tall order. 

“What’s your strategy for this?” I asked Alicia as I trotted after her down the beach.

“I don’t have one,” she said, her eyes narrowed and focused on Lee. “I’m mainly counting on my irritation to propel me to results. It’s worked before.”

This non-strategy had predictably mediocre results. With my help, Alicia was eventually able to dunk Lee, but not without mostly dunking both herself and me in the process. A truce was called shortly thereafter—partly because things were clearly going to get out of hand and partly because the water was cool and delightful against our sun-warmed skin and swimming suddenly seemed far more appealing than revenge.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about how I would hide my scars without seeming like I was trying to hide my scars; Fred seemed to occupy the opposite end of that spectrum. He peeled off his shirt and tossed it aside with absolutely no sign of hesitation or self-consciousness. This was the first time I’d seen his scar in full—this was the first time I’d ever seen him without a shirt, for that matter. The scar spanned almost the entirety of his back, starting at his left hip and creeping up to his right shoulder, dipping down to his lower right rib and snaking up his sternum to end at the hollow of his throat. It was a cleaner cut than mine, though the part at his shoulder was the widest and most knotted.

I knew what it was like to be the subject of a stare that lasted a half second too long, so I turned away quickly before he could notice me looking. It wasn’t the scar itself that made my eyes want to linger: it was the fact that he seemed completely unbothered by it. This was an utterly foreign concept to me.

As I waded into the ocean, I wondered if I would ever feel that comfortable. I imagined myself strolling out onto the beach, wearing that red two-piece that now sat in a box in my parents’ attic. I imagined my arms resting at my sides and not even feeling tempted to fold them over my stomach. It was a possibility of freedom that made me feel both exhilarated and slightly nauseated. Rather than dwell any further on that, I took a deep breath and dove under the surface of the water, pulling myself along the ocean floor and letting the muffled sounds of the waves soothe my thrumming heartbeat.

When I surfaced, the feeling was gone and I found that I could look at Fred without feeling like I was balanced on a tightrope.

We stayed out in the water for a long while, searching the ocean floor for interesting bits of seashells and letting the waves knock us around. Around eleven, Alicia and Lee excused themselves to go greet their parents, who were due to arrive any minute; I excused myself as well, claiming I needed a bit of a break. The truth was that I always felt a little like a third wheel without Alicia and Lee around and removing myself from the situation seemed like the most effective solution. I returned to the blanket, dried myself off, and applied another layer of sunscreen before wrapping myself in my towel and settling down with my book.

Twenty minutes later, Fred was trudging back to the blanket. I felt a little ping of nervousness that was partly to do with that third wheel anxiety and partly to do with the memory of the somewhat awkward conversation earlier that morning.

“Had enough, have you?” I asked as he grabbed a towel from his bag and began drying off.

“Hardly.” He rubbed his head vigorously with his towel and his hair stuck up at all angles. “I’m on a very strict sunscreen schedule. I burn under the best of circumstances and the scar is even worse.” He sighed. “Here I was thinking that it would make me look all tough and dangerous and instead it’s turned me into a maniac about sun protection.”

“Well, I’ve got SunShield if you’re interested,” I said, nudging my bag with my foot. “It’s vampire’s choice, you know. Highly recommended.”

He grinned and removed an identical bottle from his knapsack. “I’m already ahead of you. I thought I’d smelled eucalyptus. I didn’t realize you were a fellow maniac.”

“Oh, that was mostly my dad’s doing,” I said as Fred uncapped the bottle and squirted a generous portion onto his palm. “He’s very prone to sunburns and I take after him. Naturally, he’s convinced that I’m going to take one look at the sun and promptly burst into flames.”

“I dunno, Maggie, that sounds like a reasonable hypothesis.” He was grinning as he slathered himself in sunscreen, using a charm to direct some to his back.

“For my father, it’s a relatively reasonable hypothesis, but the bar is quite low. You should hear him talk about what he thinks happens on Las Ballenas.”

Fred grinned. “Lee showed me the note he sent. I thought it was brilliant.”

“He has a way with words, certainly.”

“He seems like a laugh, though.”

“A laugh and a maniac—that’s what my mum always says anyway.”

“I aspire to that sort of greatness.”

“I think you’re halfway there already.”

He quirked an eyebrow as he capped the sunscreen and stashed it in his bag. “Are you suggesting I’m already a laugh or already a maniac?”

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

He smiled. “Cheeky.”

That not exactly awkward, but not entirely comfortable silence descended on us. That little ping of nervousness was back. Talking to Fred felt a bit like walking up a flight of stairs and thinking that there was one more step than there actually was—I’d be doing just fine and then I’d stumble, my heart juddering wildly like I’d just had the floor pulled out from under me.

I was so focused on trying to think of something interesting to say that I didn’t quite notice that Fred had asked me a question.

“Sorry, my mind wandered for a moment,” I said, willing my cheeks not to flush. “What was that?”

He nodded at my book, which was still clutched in my hands. “What are you reading?”

“Oh.” I looked at my book and felt rather embarrassed. “ _Dealing with Dragons_.”

He gave me a crooked sort of grin. “Thinking about getting a new pet?”

I laughed, though I could feel my cheeks reddening. “No, it’s not a practical guide. It’s a Muggle book. A fantasy novel.”

“Yeah?” He looked genuinely interested, which was far from the judgmental nod that I had expected. Not because Fred was judgmental but because it was the sort of thing that I assumed people would probably find silly. “Interesting choice. What prompted that?”

“I just find it rather fascinating,” I said, trying to sound breezy and light. “You know, seeing how they think magic works and such. After the War, I—” I’d done it again. I barely managed not to wince. “—I just…I needed to hear a new perspective, I suppose.”

My cheeks were burning. This time I didn’t even have the excuse of not having had coffee: I was just naturally awkward on my own. What I’d told him wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the full story, either. The War and the loss of my brother had been a stark reminder that there was a dark side of magic that I knew nothing about. And that scared me a bit. Obviously I knew that Dark Magic existed…but it was different, seeing it actually play out in the War. Seeing people get hurt. Seeing people actually die.

Seeing Evan die.

The reality of Dark Magic was one that I’d never considered until the War. The idea that magic—something that was as much a part of my as my heart and lungs—had the ability to do that, the fact that I theoretically had the ability to do that…it was overwhelming. Five years later, I was still trying to cope with it. Muggle fantasy books had sort of emerged as my own odd way of handling that: I felt like I didn’t know actual magic as well as I’d thought, so I immersed myself in imaginary magical worlds where I knew even less. It didn’t make much sense, but it seemed to help curb some of my existential dread.

I sighed and looked away from Fred, staring out at the ocean. “I’m sorry. There’s clearly something about this beach that compels me to share all of my strange and embarrassing secrets with you.”

“Not to minimize it, but that hardly seems strange or embarrassing.”

I could hear the smile in his voice and I couldn’t quite help but smile myself. “Quirky coping mechanism, then.”

“And that’s hardly something you need to apologize for.”

“It’s either that or disintegrate into a cloud of embarrassment. Or hope that my dad’s right and wait for the sun’s rays to turn me into a Maggie-shaped ball of flames.”

“Don’t do that, either.”

“I suppose I don’t want Dad to be right if I can help it,” I conceded, chancing a look at Fred. He had a slight smile on his face, but it wasn’t a mocking one. “He gets a bit big-headed when he’s right and it’s insufferable. I can’t put Mum through that. A cloud of a embarrassment seems like a good compromise, though…”

He tapped the cover of my book. “Here I’ll change the subject. Tell me what this is about.”

I could still feel the ghost of a blush on my cheeks, but I took the opportunity he offered me. “It’s about a princess who is bored with being a princess so she decides to run away and live with the dragons. They’re not quite like real dragons—they can talk and such—but it’s actually quite charming.”

“That sounds brilliant.”

“You can borrow it after I’ve finished it, if you like.”

“I’m a bit of a slow reader.”

“You’d be doing me a favor, honestly. I’ve got more books than I know what to do with. It’d save me some room on my shelves.”

He smiled. “Well, I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

Alicia and Lee returned at that moment, saving me from what was sure to be another awkward pause that culminated in some sort of embarrassing misstep or revelation on my part. I couldn’t help but feel a little relieved.

“You’re not done already, are you?” asked Alicia, frowning down at the two of us.

“Sunscreen,” said Fred, waving his bottle of SunShield at her. “It’s my new hobby. Passion, really. You should know this by now.”

“You live a fascinating life, I simply can’t keep up.” She nudged my knee with her foot. “What’s your excuse?”

“Just taking a break,” I said. “Did everyone get in all right?”

“Yep,” said Lee, peeling off his shirt again and chucking it on the blanket. “Everyone sends their regards. They’ll pop down to say hello once they’re settled.”

There was a shriek followed by a splash and a triumphant whoop. The four of us looked up at the ocean. Angelina was perched on George’s shoulders, her arms raised in a victory pose; Oliver was laughing and wiping water from his eyes as Katie surfaced, sputtering indignantly.

Alicia’s eyes gleamed. “Chicken fights!”

I gave Lee a knowing look. “You know what this means.”

“It means we’re going to destroy them,” said Alicia with a wide grin that was only a little unsettling.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you really going to knock a pregnant woman over? Has your thirst for victory made you immune to all bounds of decency?”

Alicia rolled her eyes as she untied her sarong. “Oh, go on, it’s perfectly safe.” She dropped her sarong on my head. “Besides, knowing Angelina, she’s going to try to exploit that as a strategy to try and win. It’s a ruthless game, Mags, you know this.”

“You’re a monster and a menace,” I said, chucking her sarong back at her.

She swatted the sarong away and batted her eyes at me. “Thank you. Come on, Lee, we have a date with destiny.”

Lee at least had the sense to wait until she was running down the beach before shaking his head. “Well, I did know about this when I proposed.”

“You could probably make a run for it now while she’s distracted,” I said, “though I believe we’ve previously established that it is too late to get your money back.”

Lee grinned at me. “I’m going to tell her you said that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Then I’ll tell her that you considered it.”

He made an exaggerated expression of horror, slapping a hand to his heart. “Maggie. You wouldn’t. I’d no idea you could be so cruel.”

I shrugged and gave him my most beatific smile. “I’m just protecting myself.”

Down by the shore, Alicia was facing us and yelling what was pretty clearly a demand for Lee to join her. Lee grinned and waved; she folded her arms across her chest and tapped her foot.

“Well, I’d better be off,” said Lee. He looked back at me as he started to amble down the beach toward Alicia. “I’m holding you to that promise, Maggie.”

I gave him my most innocent smile. “I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

Fred and I were quiet as Lee joined Alicia and they waded into the water, Alicia clambering onto Lee’s shoulders as soon as they were in deep enough. Katie was in the process of climbing back onto Oliver, shouting to Alicia about something that was lost over the sound of the waves.

“I’ve a feeling that’s not the first time Oliver’s been in a similar position today,” said Fred.

I turned to him, raising an eyebrow and giving the sternest look I could muster. “While I appreciate the fact that you did not make that remark while I also had a mouthful of coffee, I must point out that once again, you have provided me with a rather disturbing image that I never ever wanted to think about.”

He gave me his cheekiest grin. “I submit that this is evidence that I’m learning. Weren’t you just saying you were hopeful about my eventual reformation into a proper gentleman? You can’t very well expect me to fully master that in a matter of hours. That’s not reasonable.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “I’d be more impressed if I didn’t think you were only saying that to get out of trouble.”

He raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “And whatever gave you that idea?”

“I’m an astute observer,” I said, drawing my legs to my chest and resting my chin on my knees.

He chuckled quietly. “Duly noted.”

We watched Alicia, Angelina, and Katie battle it out in the ocean. The nice thing about this was that it gave us something to talk about—something that wasn’t likely to result in me accidentally blurting out some odd secret or quirk I’d developed since the War. We took bets on winners, wagering pebbles and seashells. Angelina and Katie were fairly evenly matched, but Alicia was in another league entirely.

“Alicia’s a bit of a terror, isn’t she?” said Fred about twenty minutes later as Katie tumbled into the ocean with a shriek.

“I wasn’t lying when I said she was a menace,” I said as Katie surfaced and spat a stream of water at Alicia. “She’s always been very competitive about this game. Since we were kids, really. She used to get really sour with me when I’d beat her.”

“Yeah?” said Fred, giving me a crooked sort of grin. “How often did you win?”

“Always.”

Fred whistled. “Really?”

“Not to boast, but I’ve had an undefeated streak going since we were twelve,” I said. “I know that you are likely very impressed with me now and quite possibly a little intimidated as well.”

“Frankly, Maggie, I’m rather disturbed that you kept this from me,” said Fred, looking mildly affronted. “All these years we’ve known each other and you haven’t said a word about it.”

I shrugged. “Well, it never seemed particularly relevant. It’s a skill that doesn’t really have much practical use.”

“I’m afraid you are underestimating my commitment to very petty competitions.”

I laughed. “I will make a note of that so I don’t make that mistake in the future.”

He paused for a moment, his eyebrow quirked. “Want to have a go?”

I laughed again, mostly to hide the fact that my stomach had done a nervous sort of flip. “What? Challenge Alicia to a chicken fight?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t have a partner.”

He scoffed. “Maggie. I have half a mind to be insulted.”

“So you’re offering to be my partner.”

“Naturally.”

“I dunno, Fred, do you think you can handle the glory?” This was what I said out loud; in reality, I was more concerned with the intimate position that this would require. He could handle the glory, certainly; I wasn’t sure if I could handle having my legs draped over his bare shoulders or his hands gripping my thighs. An arm’s length, grain of salt approach was rather difficult to accomplish when the person in question had his head between your legs, even if it was only for a stupid water game. 

He didn’t seem to be bothered by the intimacy of this, though based on his comment about Oliver and Katie, he seemed to be somewhat aware of it.

Probably I was overthinking it.

“Of course I can handle the glory, what sort of question is that?”

Honestly, he seemed more perturbed by the suggestion that he might not be able to handle the glory.

_Get it together, Maggie._

“It’s quite serious business,” I said, fixing him with a stern and serious look. “You’d be part of a very important dynasty.”

He stood up, brushing the sand off his swim trunks. “I think I’m up to the task.” He offered me a hand. I hesitated for a split second. He raised an eyebrow and looked at me expectantly.

Against my better judgment, perhaps, I took his hand and stood.

“You’d better not disappoint me,” I said, hoping my false bravado was doing a decent enough job of hiding my nerves.

He grinned at me, dropping my hand once I was standing. “Come on, Carlyle, let’s see what you’re made of.”

We walked down the beach to the water, which felt pleasant and cool against my skin after so much time in the sun. I pretended to be preoccupied with my hair as we waded in, shaking it out and winding it into a tight bun on the back of my head. Alicia and Katie were having a rematch and Katie was once again losing.

Fred tapped my shoulder. “Ready?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

He got behind me, took a deep breath, and dropped underneath the water. I felt his hands grab the backs of my knees and then the feather light touch of his hair brushing against the inside of my thighs as he brought my legs over his shoulders.

Before I could spend much time contemplating the intimacy of this position—before I could reflect on the fact that his shoulders felt stronger than I expected, or the fact that I’d never really noticed how long and elegant his fingers were until they were gripping my thighs—before I could think about any of that, he was standing and I was trying to balance myself

“You good?” he asked.

I would need to overthink this later.

“Yep,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Alicia!” he called as he walked toward the others. “The end of your reign of terror is nigh!”

* * *

My undefeated streak continued on uninterrupted. 

The game quickly shifted from a general competition to a battle between Alicia and me. I unseated her twelve times in a row, though there was a moment on the eighth round when I thought she might beat me (I would never tell her this, of course). George, Angelina, Oliver, and Katie cheered me on, which I felt a little guilty about until I remembered that I was ending a reign of terror and Alicia had long outgrown sulking about losing.

“All right,” said Alicia, surfacing after her twelfth defeat. “I’m starving. Let’s go in.”

“Are you admitting defeat?” asked Fred.

“I’m admitting hunger,” said Alicia primly. “I can’t very well be expected to perform well on an empty stomach.”

“I think that counts as admitting defeat,” said Lee.

Alicia shot Lee an annoyed look. He shrugged. “I’m hungry too. This seemed like an effective way to expedite the acquisition of food.”

“Victory!” shouted Fred.

“On a technicality!” said Alicia.

“It’s not a technicality,” Angelina pointed out. “She did beat you.”

“It’s a technicality in that I’m not officially admitting defeat,” said Alicia, splashing some water at Angelina.

“Well, you lot can argue about this,” I said, sliding off of Fred’s shoulders and into the water. “I’m going in for lunch.”

“No, wait, we’ve got to have a slightly obnoxious victory celebration first,” said Fred.

We executed a series of increasingly complicated high fives until Alicia used my momentary distraction as an opportunity to launch herself onto my back and topple me into the water.

It was nearly one o’clock when we arrived back at the blanket for lunch. Alicia and Lee had packed a picnic hamper full of sandwiches, lemonade, fresh fruits, and some pastries that I suspected were pilfered from the hotel’s breakfast spread this morning. I mostly listened as the others talked and joked, feeling rather pleasantly waterlogged and sun warmed.

I heard Uncle Pete before I saw him, which is fairly typical: he has the sort of voice that is clearly made for radio. Aunt Lynn always jokes that if he ever used the Amplifying Charm, he would likely level a city block.

“Miss Maggie-Mac!”

Unlike Alicia, Uncle Pete doesn’t use this nickname when he’s worried about me—in fact, he uses it almost exclusively in lieu of my proper name. I’m more likely to hear him call me just Maggie when he’s worried or upset or talking about something serious. When I was younger, the combination of Uncle Pete’s booming voice and his plethora of nicknames would have been a source of embarrassment; now, it was a quaintly amusing sort of thing, a quirk that I didn’t really appreciate until I was old enough to know what mattered.

I stood, brushing sand and crumbs off of my legs. “Hi Uncle Pete.”

He enveloped me in a bear hug, lifting me slightly off the ground, just like he always did. “You’re getting to be too old for me to do this.” He had been saying this to me since I was seven. “How are you, sweet pea?”

“I’m well, how was the trip in?”

“Well, we’re here in one piece, aren’t we? Can’t complain about that!”

“Pete, as always, you’re hogging my niece,” said Aunt Lynn, nudging him out of the way with a good-natured smile. “Hello, my love!”

“Hi Aunt Lynn,” I said as she pulled me into a hug. 

“Let’s see,” she said, pulling back from me and assessing me with a critical eye. “No sunburns that I can see. Your father will be so relieved.”

I sighed. “How many times has he written you?”

“Only twice. Though he did mention it yesterday when we had lunch.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know, you’d think he’d give me a little credit. I have made it to twenty-five without dying even once.”

It slipped out of my mouth before I could really think about it properly, before I could remind myself that there was a time when my parents were practically living at St. Mungo’s, a time when they weren’t certain that I’d make it to next week, let alone twenty-five. In assessing the damage from the Battle of Hogwarts, it was easy to forget these little things that were lost. The offhand joke, the turn of phrase that suddenly had much darker meanings and dredged up memories you wished you could forget.

Aunt Lynn squeezed my elbow and gave me a soft smile. She understood. Aunt Lynn always understood, even when you didn’t ask her to—that was one of the things I loved about her best of all.

“We’ll get him a hobby,” she said. “Perhaps coin collecting or bird watching.”

“Not bird watching. That’s outside. He’s quite prone to sunburns, you know.”

Her eyes sparkled and she squeezed my elbow once more. “I’ve heard.”

I said hello to Mr. and Mrs. Jordan next. I’d only met them a few times previously, but I liked them both quite a bit. Mrs. Jordan was bubbly and vivacious, the sort of person who always laughed with her head thrown back. Mr. Jordan was a little more reserved and quiet, but he had the same sort of mischievous streak that I often saw in Lee, a particular sort of glint in his eye when he knew something that you didn’t.

Aunt Lynn, Uncle Pete, and the Jordans didn’t stay terribly long—they still had some unpacking to do and Aunt Lynn and Mrs. Jordan were intent on finding a particular antique shop that Aunt Lynn had heard about from my mother, who’d heard about it from a family friend, but wasn’t entirely sure about the name or the location.

“It will be an adventure!” said Mrs. Jordan declared, Aunt Lynn nodding in agreement. Uncle Pete and Mr. Jordan exchanged a look that said they thought “adventure” was more likely a code for “wild goose chase” or “disaster.”

We packed up for the day around three—partly because we all wanted to shower and change before dinner and partly because Angelina was starting to look a little queasy. I had my eyes set on a post-shower nap—the coffee from that morning had long since worn off and the sun and water had left me feeling pleasantly sleepy.

When I crawled into bed and closed my eyes, I could still feel the motion of the waves. My skin still smelled like sand and sun and salt.

But as I drifted off to sleep, my mind was occupied by other sensations: the taste of coffee and the feeling of long fingers gripping the bare skin of my legs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, kudosing, following, and bookmarking! It always makes my day to get alerts on this fic (or on my other fic, Playing with Fire, which also happens to be a Fred/OC story (see how smooth I am at working in these shameless plugs?)). Please let me know what you think! I always enjoy hearing from people.
> 
> I have mixed feelings about this chapter, so I’d love to know how you think it turned out.
> 
> I’m hoping to get the next Playing With Fire chapter posted in late August 2018, so Chapter 4 of Delicate should be up sometime shortly after that.


	4. Gravity

I slept well that second night in Las Ballenas. Unusually well, at least for me. I woke up early feeling refreshed, energized, and rather optimistic. The mistakes I had made yesterday—all the little embarrassments and missteps—those were the actions of a girl who had slept poorly. Today, I was well rested. Today, I would not make those same mistakes. I would keep my composure; I would be measured and calm. I wouldn't accidentally reveal all the little ways I was damaged from the War.

I would stop thinking about the feeling of certain hands on my thighs.

In retrospect, these were rather ambitious goals. Too ambitious, when you consider my recent performance in this area of my life.

The morning and afternoon were uneventful enough to lull me into a false sense of security. Alicia and I spent the morning exploring the open-air market with Aunt Lynn and Uncle Pete while the others slept in. We breakfasted on fresh fruit from local orchards and Uncle Pete tried to haggle with vendors in laughably bad Spanish.

"Señor," one of the vendors said finally, barely managing to keep a straight face, "forgive me, but I do not think you are saying what you think you are saying. 'Un pollo' means 'chicken,' but 'una polla' is…it is a rather vulgar word for…something else…"

"Wait a moment," said Alicia, her eyes lighting up. Her Spanish was not very good, but she could put two and two together from context, "did my father just ask you how much the penis with rice costs?"

The vendor managed a brief nod before he burst out laughing. A lesser man might have been horribly embarrassed by this encounter, but Uncle Pete laughed so hard that he cried. The vendor—a man named Luis—ended up giving us all free bread with alioli, declaring we were his favorite customers this week.

In the afternoon, Katie, Angelina, Alicia, and I went with Aunt Lynn and Mrs. Jordan on what proved to be another fruitless search for that antique shop that Aunt Lynn had heard about from Mum. We ended up getting lost in the historical district for over an hour, but we found a bakery that sold greixonera and ensaïmadas that practically melted in our mouths and I found a yellow sarong that made me seem like a proper adult who knows how to pack for the beach, so the excursion wasn't a total failure.

We returned to the hotel around four and had an early dinner at five. And then we returned to our rooms so that we could prepare to go out.

To a nightclub.

I had resigned myself to the fact that I would likely have to go to a nightclub or three while we were visiting Las Ballenas. I had made an agreement with Alicia: I would be a good sport and go along if I didn't have to kiss a stranger or drink some sort of overly fancy drink from a vessel that was not normally used for drinking.

Alicia said that I was overreacting and that no reasonable person would make me do either of those things anyway. I was somewhat skeptical, but decided I would take her at her word—not that I really had a choice about it.

While Las Ballenas was very trendy, most of the nightclubs had embraced a sort of casual, beachy dress code that meant that I could get away with a slightly dressy tank top, shorts, and strappy sandals (though I suspected that I would regret the sandals by the end of the evening). I made an attempt at a smoky eye, mucked it up, scrubbed my face and started over, mucked it up again, and finally made Alicia do it because this was all her idea anyway.

I thought that I was doing a decent job at hiding my true feelings about this excursion until we met the others in the lobby. Katie took one look at me and immediately started laughing.

"Oh, Maggie," she said, pulling me into a hug. "You poor thing, you really are a dear."

"There's a reason the Sorting Hat put me in Hufflepuff and that reason is because I am frightfully dull," I said, trying to sound more at ease with my conspicuous dissimilarities than I actually felt. "I promise I won't be a spoilsport."

"You're not dull, you're very sensible," said Katie as she released me. "Angelina was just saying that she's certain this isn't going to do her lower back pain any favors, but she's going along with it anyway."

Angelina shrugged. "It's true. This is not the best choice I've made. I will probably regret it by the end of the evening."

"And there's an eighty percent chance that I'll drink too much and have a horrible hangover tomorrow," said Katie.

"I think I'd put that more at ninety percent," said Oliver.

"And that, of course, is Wood demonstrating his own poor decision to not keep his mouth shut," said Fred as Katie aimed a kick at her husband's shins.

"I'm consistent, though," said Oliver, dodging Katie and giving her a smile that was clearly intended to be endearing. "I always make the same poor decision."

"Is that consistency or a failure to learn from your mistakes?" asked Katie, poking Oliver in the ribs.

Oliver shrugged. "Could be either one, really."

"Clearly, we need at least one sensible person in this group," said George to me. "There's no telling what sort of trouble we'll get up to with this level of poor judgment."

"But it will be _fun_ trouble," said Katie cheerfully.

"I'm willing to accept the very remote possibility that it might be somewhere in the general vicinity of fun," I said.

"Hey, that's progress!" said Lee, looking rather impressed. "Two weeks ago you were heavily implying that this may be considered a form of torture in a court of law."

"I haven't entirely ruled that out."

"Oh, stop it," said Alicia, linking her arm with mine. "We'll get you a little sloshed, do a little dancing, break some hearts, you'll love it."

"'Love' might be a rather strong word, don't you think?" asked Fred, smiling wryly as he assessed my expression.

"Maybe 'politely tolerate?'" suggested George.

Fred tilted his head to the side as he looked at me. "Hmm…maybe 'grudgingly tolerate.'"

My attempts to keep a stern expression were rapidly failing. A smile twitched at my lips and Fred noticed.

"Definitely 'grudgingly,'" he said, his smile growing wider.

"With the expectation that I'll be adored and appreciated forever," I said.

Fred nodded. "Naturally."

The conversation quickly shifted to working out how to get to our first destination, which mainly involved Lee and Oliver bickering over the most efficient route. Oliver eventually won that argument and we set off on foot for Piedra Blanca.

I'd heard of Piedra Blanca because it was one of the places that had banned Ramses Llewellyn after his doxy dust-fueled rampage through Las Ballenas, though I couldn't remember if he'd been banned for turning the manager into an ostrich or if I was getting it confused with a different nightclub that had banned him for setting a cage of pixies loose in their VIP lounge. I briefly considered asking the server about it, but I had a difficult enough time getting him to hear my drink order over the music and I decided I didn't need to know that badly.

Piedra Blanca was the sort of nightclub that I disliked the most—not just because the music was too loud and every light was too low, but because there were approximately six tall tables in the entire establishment and no chairs to speak of. Why bother serving drinks if you're not going to provide a place for people to sit? Some people (me) like being able to have a place to sit and have their drink; some people (again, me) use a drink as a prop so they have something to fidget with while they quietly wonder what other people are saying because the music is too loud. This is rather hard to do if appropriate furniture is not provided.

You might be wondering why I don't simply conjure tables and chairs of my own. I would, but this is generally a good way to be ejected from a nightclub, a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. Twice.

If I sound like a bit of a grump, it's because I am, at least about this topic. (The volume of the music provokes a similar reaction). But the rather fortunate part about being a grump about nightclubs—perhaps the only fortunate part—was that I had expounded on this topic frequently enough that both Alicia and Lee were highly aware of my feelings on the matter. Following the ejected-for-conjuring-appropriate-seating incidents described previously, Lee had developed a rather uncanny ability to find and claim the only table available in the place. People who were about to leave were blood in the water and Lee was a shark; within ten minutes of arriving in Piedra Blanca, he had secured a table right by the dance floor.

I fiddled with my straw and sipped at my drink, idly listening to the sixty percent of the conversations I could hear over the steady throb of the bass. Halfway through my second drink, my limbs were starting to feel sort of pleasantly loose and my various anxieties, neuroses, and grumpiness about being in a nightclub had begun to drop off into a lower mumble that was easier for me to ignore. At one point, Fred caught my eye from across the table and a small smile played at his lips, almost as though he could hear my grumpy internal monologue. I shrugged as if to say, "Oh well," and took a rather long pull from my drink, which made him laugh.

I'm not typically much of a dancer unless Alicia's around, in which case I'm a reluctant dancer who has been coerced into dancing. Alicia, of course, believes that dancing is not only fun, but mostly it is mandatory and you're coming out onto the dance floor whether you like it or not, Maggie.

I cannot prove that alcohol was invented precisely for occasions like these, but it seems likely.

So when a song I knew was a favorite of Alicia's came on, I was expecting the hand that closed around my wrist. Fred caught my eye as Alicia began pulling me away and I made my eyes wide and pulled my lips into a pout. He laughed again and that was the sound I carried with me as Alicia dragged me to the dance floor.

It was crowded, but not overly so, though I was beginning to realize that sandals were a mistake after the second time someone stepped on my toe. Angelina and Katie had followed Alicia and me—the boys, it seemed, had opted to stay at the table for the time being.

This, we soon learned, was a mistake.

Apparently, being a group of four seemingly unattached women at a nightclub means that you are effectively wearing a sign that says, "Attention strange men: please come up behind me and grind your hips against my bum." This was an experience that none of us wanted to have.

It happened to Katie first—I looked away for a moment and the next thing I knew, she's telling a man with a goatee exactly where he could stick his wand. Mere minutes later, unfamiliar hands were grabbing my hips and someone's hot breath was on my neck. I pushed myself away and found a skinny blond man with a cobra tattooed on his arm standing behind me.

"Sorry, no," I said, immediately furious with myself for apologizing.

He gave me a smile that felt more like a leer and said something that I couldn't quite catch over the music. I wasn't about to lean in and ask him to repeat it—he'd already been much closer than I had wanted in the first place.

Alicia was suddenly shoving her way between the two of us. "She's taken!" she yelled at him. "Her boyfriend is very large and very jealous."

He started to say something and she cut him off. "Large boyfriend! Many muscles! Well endowed! She's not interested!"

He made a sour sort of face and disappeared back into the crowd, probably looking for another unsuspecting dancer.

"Did you really have to make my imaginary boyfriend the jealous type?" I asked Alicia once he'd finally gone. "Jealousy is a toxic ingredient in any relationship."

Alicia rolled her eyes. "I invent a muscly, well-endowed boyfriend to save you from a creep and you're complaining about his backstory not being what you wanted."

"I think I should have some say in what goes on in my imaginary life," I said. "Actually, I'm surprised Katie didn't jump in on that. She seemed to enjoy yelling at the last fellow."

"She and Angelina went to get the lads." Alicia sighed. "Another chap pulled that stunt with Angelina right before your friend came by. They thought we might have fewer unwelcome advances if we weren't by ourselves." She shot a glare in the general direction of a man with a shaved head who was edging rather too close for comfort.

I let out a sort of exasperated sigh. The fact that we had to do this was ridiculous. Shouldn't we be able to just exist in space without having to constantly be on guard? Why do some men need the presence of another man to discourage them from treating a woman like a sexual object?

"Because some men are idiots," said Alicia.

I frowned. "I said that out loud, didn't I?"

"You did."

"I think I might be a little drunk."

Alicia snorted. "Of course you are, that's the only reason I was able to drag you out here. If I tried that while you were sober, it would have been much more difficult."

I scowled at her. "You know perfectly well that I'm very cooperative and agreeable, even when you have terrible ideas that I know I will hate."

"Yes, but you're much more likely to complain about dancing when you're sober." She grinned at me and pinched my cheeks just as Angelina and Katie returned with Lee, Fred, George, and Oliver in tow.

"Right," said Angelina, "reinforcements are here."

"Though we shouldn't need them to be here," said Katie. "We _should_ be able to dance in a club without being grabbed at."

"Exactly!" I said emphatically. "Ours is not the problematic behavior!"

"Look, you know we all agree with the two of you, but this is really not the proper time for this conversation," said Alicia. She grabbed me by the shoulders and steered me toward Fred. "Here, Fred, please dance with my highly cooperative and definitely very agreeable cousin before she and Katie try to start a rally and get us chucked out."

I stumbled a little as Alicia pushed me toward Fred and he caught me by the shoulders to steady me. Briefly, I realized that I would have to add the feeling of certain hands against my bare shoulders to my catalog of Things I Was Definitely Not Going to Think About.

Fortunately, I was still sober enough to know not to say any of that out loud, but drunk enough to not feel completely speechless when his hands touched my shoulders or when he leaned in so I could hear him over the music.

"That sounded sarcastic. Have you been causing trouble, Miss Carlyle?"

"I'll have you know I've been nothing but delightful, despite my reluctance to be here."

He grinned. "Has it been as dreadful as you thought it would be?"

I couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, that's a hard question to answer. No one's made me do a shot out of a stuffed grindylow, but a stranger did grind himself against my bum a few minutes ago."

"If you point him out to me, George and I have developed a whole range of products that provide the appropriate revenge for such occasions."

I laughed again. "Don't tempt me, I can't afford to bail you out."

He scoffed. "You're assuming I'll be caught. Do you recall nothing from our years of schooling?"

"That's exactly why I'm skeptical. How many detentions did you have because you were caught doing something you weren't supposed to be doing? Or did you lose count after the first thousand?"

He laughed. "Cheeky." The music changed to an upbeat song and his eyes lit up. "Come on, dance with me—this is one of my favorites."

I wasn't keen on dancing, but I liked dancing with Fred. He was a good dancer and he had a very natural and easy way of moving with the music. I liked hearing his slight off key singing, I liked the way his hands felt when they occasionally brushed against mine, I liked that he would occasionally lean in to relay some observation that always made me laugh. I liked that he kept dancing with me through several songs. I liked the way the ends of his hair were going a little dark with sweat and the way his cotton t-shirt clung to his chest.

I liked it in all the ways I knew I shouldn't, in all the ways that were not indicative of an arm's length, grain of salt approach.

 _Get it together, Maggie_.

I was a little disappointed when Alicia cut in to say that the others wanted to try another club, though I initially tried to convince myself I wasn't. I followed Fred and the others off the dance floor, hoping that whatever emotions I was feeling weren't showing on my face. The night air felt cool and pleasant on my heated cheeks as we left Piedra Blanca and set off for El Lirio, but the pleasant and bubbly sort of feeling that had persisted in Piedra Blanca while I danced with Fred was gradually beginning to fade to a sleepy and sick sort of feeling.

El Lirio wasn't as loud as Piedra Blanca and it had appropriate seating, so it was an immediate step up in my book. I ordered ice water and fidgeted with my straw while the others chatted. Eventually, they got up to go to the dance floor—this time, I demurred, saying I needed a little more time to rehydrate.

I sat at the table by myself for a while, sipping at my water and trying not to let my eyes linger on Fred. He'd danced a bit with Katie, Angelina, and Alicia, but eventually, some of the other girls in the club got up the nerve to ask him. They were all leggy and pretty. I'd caught a glimpse of myself in one of the decorative mirrors that lined the entrance to El Lirio and I knew that I'd sweated off most of my makeup and what remained was smudged; little flyaway strands of hair had frizzed in the humidity and escaped my hair tie—none of these other girls seemed to be experiencing the same sort of problems. It was no wonder, really, that he hadn't tried to talk me into coming out on the dance floor when I announced my intention to sit and rehydrate. No wonder, when the girls that were dancing with him were so pretty and had no reservations about touching his shoulders or bringing his hands to their annoyingly tiny waists. Probably, he would go home with one of them and have amazing island sex. Tomorrow, I'd have to look at the circles under his eyes and know what kept him up that late.

I looked away from the dance floor. I was being ridiculous. _This_ was why I had my arm's length, grain of salt approach in the first place: because I had an overactive imagination that made it easy for me to get carried away. I hadn't had a boyfriend in a while and Fred was handsome and friendly. Combined, those two things made me read a lot into nothing. He wasn't interested in me. We would never work out. It was late, I was a little drunk, and I was being silly. It didn't matter who he went home with.

It was after midnight when I began contemplating my escape. I was tired, the others had been occupied with dancing, and I was getting a blister on my heel from my sandals. Alicia came back to the table to check on me shortly after I'd made this decision.

"Had enough?" she asked as she sat down, her voice raised so I could hear her over the music.

"Think I'm starting to fade," I said.

She made a sympathetic face and patted my shoulder. "You're not going to Apparate back to the hotel, are you?"

"Better not, I've had a few and I'm feeling a little off as well."

She squeezed my shoulder. "Poor Mags. You really are a good sport."

"I'm sorry to spoil the fun."

"Don't be silly, you're fine. I appreciate you coming out with us." She stood. "Let me go collect Lee and we'll take you back. I don't want you walking by yourself this late."

I stretched and drained the last of my water, as Alicia went off in search of Lee. Crashing into my hotel bed was less than twenty minutes away; I just needed to get through these next few minutes first. I could do this.

But when Alicia returned, it was Fred who accompanied her, not Lee; Fred, looking a little sweaty and tired, but without a leggy pretty girl in sight.

"Change of plans," said Alicia. "Fred's also calling it a night, so we thought it made sense for you to go back together."

"Oh."

Fred grinned. "You don't have to sound so disappointed, Maggie."

I recovered from my initial shock. "I just didn't expect that. I thought you'd be out until sunrise at the earliest."

"In my youth, certainly, but alas, I am an old and weary man now."

Alicia rolled her eyes. "Pair of geezers, the two of you. Though I think we won't be out for much longer. Lee's getting punchy, so it's only a matter of time."

"Well, wake me when you get in," I said as I stood. "Promise. Otherwise, I'll worry."

"You'd worry in your sleep?" Alicia frowned. "Never mind, that sounds exactly like something you'd do."

I shrugged. "I'm a complex woman of many unusual talents. Promise you'll wake me."

"I will wake you, now get out of here or I'll have them chuck you out."

I said goodbye to Alicia and waved to the others as I followed Fred out of the club, trying to ignore the way my nerves suddenly felt all jangly and strange, like I'd been struck by lightning.

The streets of Las Ballenas were still busy, even though it was well past midnight. People were congregating on the streets talking and laughing or stumbling into doorways and ducking into shadows to kiss or whisper arguments. Fairy lights were draped like streamers between buildings and curled around wrought iron railings like illuminated vines. Music trickled out of open windows and blended together with voices, melding into a sort of discordant clatter of noise and sound. Nearby, someone was grilling meat; you could smell the salt of the ocean and the perfume of some sort of tropical flower.

That jangly, lightning struck nervous sort of feeling had begun to shift into a familiar fear that coiled like a python around my ribcage. My breath stuttered in my throat. It was all a little much—the noise, the smells, the throngs of people, even the sound of my heartbeat pulsing in my ears. My foot caught on a cobblestone and I fell, skinning my palms and knees against the ground. Adrenaline shot through me and my heartbeat thrummed louder, like I had narrowly avoided a more dangerous fate, like a more dangerous fate might still be lurking around corners if I wasn't careful.

Fred was suddenly there, crouching down on the ground, his brow furrowed. "All right?"

I tried to smile like I didn't feel like I was about to be sick. "Fine. Just a scrape." I brushed the dirt from my hands, but no amount of confidence could hide the fact that my hands were shaking.

His eyes flicked from my hands back to my face, which I imagine must have gone very pale or very green, or perhaps both. Something in his expression softened. "If we can get up this block, I think we can cut over to one of the side streets. Should be less crowded."

I nodded. "All right."

His hand felt cool against mine as he helped me up. I stood, brushing the dirt from my knees, trying to convince my legs that we could make it back to the hotel. Fred led me through the crowd, his hand occasionally grazing my elbow or shoulder so that I didn't stray too far.

We were able to cut over to one of the side streets, just like he'd said, and it was much less crowded. Even the air seemed cooler and easier to breathe, soothing my clammy forehead and flushed cheeks. My heartbeat slowed enough that my heart didn't feel like it was about to crawl out of my chest. For a brief moment, I thought I'd dodged the worst of it; for a moment, I thought I might be all right after all.

Later, in the privacy of my room, I would wonder how things might have gone if I wasn't such a complete disaster, if it had been just the two of us alone under the stars, with the air full of sea salt and promise.

Instead, my momentary relief ended as my stomach pitched violently and I stumbled to the nearest rubbish bin and vomited.

 _Fuck. This is not ideal_ , I thought to myself as I retched into the bin. _Excellent work, Maggie. Truly you are a vision to behold._

When I finished, I murmured a quick _Aguamenti_ to rinse out my mouth and then a cleaning charm for my face. I took a few deep breaths and slowly straightened up, my legs wobbling rather uncertainly.

"Here." Fred's hand was at my back, his other at my elbow, gently guiding me toward a nearby bench. "Sit down for a moment."

My knees were trembling as I sat down. I cradled my head in my hands, my pulse juddering in a syncopated rhythm in my throat. I felt Fred sit down next to me.

I was quiet for a moment, trying to breathe evenly and deeply. The sick feeling in my stomach had subtly changed from nausea to embarrassment. Two days into this trip and I'd made a fool of myself at least three different times. I tried to think of an excuse—too much to drink, too little to eat, the heat, the late hour—but crafting a non-embarrassing story seemed to require energy that I didn't have at the moment.

"Sorry." I couldn't quite look at Fred, who I imagine must be regretting his choice not to go home with one of the leggy pretty girls he'd been dancing with. "Something about crowds sometimes…" I trailed off. "Well. It doesn't really make much sense, I suppose."

"It doesn't have to." His voice was gentler than I expected and startled, I looked up at him and found soft eyes and sympathy. "And there's no need to apologize."

"Well…" I shrugged. "Vomit."

"I've seen worse after an evening at a nightclub," he said with a wry smile.

A weak laugh escaped me. "You're just saying that."

"Oh, if only I were," he sighed. "George once vomited on my feet, you know. He had nearly half a bottle of Ogden's and a truly unreasonable amount of shrimp. A ghastly amount of shrimp, honestly. I had to throw out my shoes. There was no saving them after that."

I wrinkled my nose. "That's disgusting."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "I told you I've seen worse. You made it to the bin. I ought to give you a medal, really."

I laughed again and there was a part of me that felt a little better. "Well…I endeavor not to do that in front of others, so I am sorry for that."

"You don't have to be sorry, Maggie."

There was that gentle voice again; I found myself looking away because I didn't know what else to do. There was a long moment of quiet and for once, I didn't feel the need to fill the silence, mostly because I was trying to gather myself back together into the semblance of a human being. I sat there with my head cradled in my hands, counting my slow intakes of breath and waiting for my pulse to return to normal, all the while quietly wondering if I could ever manage to look back on this night without feeling a crippling sense of humiliation.

"For me, it's small spaces." It had been so long since either one of us had said anything that the sound of Fred's voice almost startled me. "It's strange…I don't really remember anything after the collapse, but I suppose there must be some part of me that does."

I chanced a look at him. He was staring straight ahead, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely together. His expression was difficult to read; briefly, I wondered what it had cost him to tell me that, if that was the sort of thing that he had ever shared with anyone beyond his family.

"What happens?" tumbled out of my mouth before I could think about it.

He shrugged. "It's hard to describe…it's almost like I can't breathe properly, like there's a band around my chest cinched a few inches too tight and my stomach's trying to turn itself inside out."

I knew exactly what feeling he was talking about.

He took a deep breath, almost like he was reassuring himself that talking about the feeling wouldn't summon it. "Usually I black out if I can't get away in time."

He looked at me then, his eyes soft and a little sad. I could see the faint crease of laugh lines around his mouth, almost like parentheses, only these parentheses were not an aside: they were an exclamation mark calling attention to the fact that he wasn't smiling, that he didn't smile as much as he used to.

"I don't know why it's crowds," I said quietly, almost without thinking. I looked away then because looking at him was making me feel dizzy in a way that I didn't quite understand. "I was alone when…well, when my brother…" I swallowed and took a deep breath. "It doesn't make sense, but I suppose you're right: it doesn't have to. Not a lot of things do."

"No, they don't."

We were both quiet again, but it was a different silence this time. It wasn't the not-exactly-comfortable silence that had descended on us at the beach, but it wasn't the same sort of pulling-myself-back-together silence that had occurred only moments ago. This was a safe sort of silence, one that eased the feeling of panic that had been gnawing at my stomach. It was two people understanding something somewhat unexpected about each other.

"Thank you," he said after a moment.

I looked at him. "For what?"

He rubbed the back of his neck and smiled. "Well…this is going to sound like I'm thanking you for being sick, which isn't exactly what I mean, but…" He pursed his lips. "It's nice to know I'm not the only one, you know?"

My lips were dry. I swallowed. "Yeah."

I didn't know exactly why, but my skin felt electrified as Fred's eyes met mine and I found that I had to look away again because everything suddenly felt very strange, like the world had tilted on its axis and my body was still trying to sort out this new version of gravity.

We sat quietly together until I felt like my legs could carry me home. We said goodnight and returned to our respective hotel rooms.

I tried not to wonder what might have happened if I hadn't looked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! And for your feedback! And for being you! You're great!
> 
> This is a few days later than I had originally hoped—the beginning and end were super easy to write, but the middle was a bit difficult and took a little longer for me to figure out. Those difficulties aside, I was excited to write this chapter and I'd love to know what you think!
> 
> The next update should be posted after the next Playing With Fire update. I'm aiming for early-to-mid October 2018. There is a chance that it might be a little later than that, as I've got some real life stuff happening in mid October and I'm not sure if it will have an impact on writing yet. I'll post any updates in my profile if I encounter delays.


	5. Flirt

Wednesday was just an extended series of mistakes.

It began with me staring at the ceiling in the early hours of the morning and quietly reflecting on the mistakes and missteps that I'd made only a few hours ago. It was immediately obvious to me that there were several things about the night before that I was better off forgetting. I itemized them in my head as I listened to the steady rhythm of Alicia's breathing:

_Things that I was better off forgetting:_

  1. Vomiting into the rubbish bin – This was self-explanatory.
  2. The fact that I was even remotely concerned with whether or not Fred went home with a leggy pretty girl – The fact that I thought that this had any sort of impact on me—even if it was only for a second—suggested a sort of self-flattery so absurd it was practically delusional.
  3. The too friendly stranger rubbing himself on my bum in Piedra Blanca – This was also self-explanatory.



Then I came up with a second list, a little shorter and decidedly narrower in its scope:

_Things that I can't quite seem to stop thinking about, even though there's no reason for me to think about them:_

  1. The feeling of Fred's hands on my bare shoulders. Related topics to forget: the feeling of his hands on my thighs.
  2. Dancing with Fred and the fact that I liked it as much as I did.



Neither one of these things meant anything. They were observations and biological responses to particular situations: they didn't hold any secret truth about what Fred might think about me. Intellectually, I knew all of this—I reminded myself about it frequently—but my mind, stubborn and reflexive as it was, kept returning to these things like they might actually mean something if only I thought about them a little more.

There was one thing from the night before that I didn't mind remembering, one thing that wasn't some combination of embarrassing, delusional, or silly: our quiet conversation on the bench. When he told me that small spaces made him freeze up and his lungs constrict; when he said that weird idiosyncrasies like that—like my strange reaction to crowds—didn't need to make sense.

No one had ever told me that before. Or perhaps they had, but I hadn't heard it as clearly as I did after midnight on the streets of Las Ballenas.

Under normal circumstances, I would have felt some sort of retroactive embarrassment that I'd said as much as I had. Perhaps that was why my mind kept returning to the idea, as though I'd made a mistake in my initial assessment, as though there actually was something there to be embarrassed about.

But I didn't feel embarrassed. Instead I felt…it wasn't exactly peace so much as it was an absence of regret. If I'd felt at peace, I imagine that I would have been able to set the memory aside instead of turning it over and over in my head and searching for something that might change that assessment. But no matter how I looked at it, it seemed right and correct. It made sense in the way that thunder and lightning made sense: there was an order to it, a cause and effect that felt good and right.

All that said: I needed to devote far less time to thinking about Fred Weasley. I reminded myself of this sternly as I stared at a crack in the ceiling that looked rather like a question mark. It was all well and good that we'd had that moment, but thinking about him beyond that—that was inviting disappointment. There was no question about it. There were no hidden meanings in his hands on my shoulders or the fact that he'd danced with me in the clubs. I was not doing myself any favors by wondering about things that could never happen and speculating on feelings that he would never have.

And what did we have in common, really? We'd both emerged from the Battle of Hogwarts with new scars and we were both perhaps a little sadder and more scared than we had been before that second day of May. But that was it, really. My attraction to him was mostly a reaction to the fact that he was handsome and nice and sometimes he spoke to me in a low and quiet voice that reminded me too much of secrets shared in the early hours of the morning with bed sheets wrapped around bare skin and cheeks pressed against pillows.

It was nothing. I was romanticizing nothing. Better to rein in my expectations and remind myself of that reality before it was too late. I was being cruel and frank with myself in order to prevent an avoidable heartache.

My quiet reflection was interrupted by the first official mistake of the day: the shrill ring of Alicia's alarm clock.

It was six o'clock in the morning. It had been a little after one o'clock when she stumbled in, smelling of firewhisky, sweat, and gin and bearing news that we had to be up for a hike at half past eight the following morning.

"Please tell me you're drunk or joking or both," I'd said when she explained this to me.

She sighed. "Sadly, no. I got my days confused."

"Well, surely you can reschedule."

Alicia gave a humorless laugh. "Funny thing. I booked the non-refundable option because it saved me twenty percent."

" _Alicia_."

" _And_  even if I hadn't done that, this hike is extremely popular. I only got in because they had a last minute cancellation." She was giving me a grim sort of look. "And I really hate to do this, but I've wanted to go on this hike since I read about it in a travel magazine a few years ago and it's my  _wedding_   _week_ …"

I sighed into my pillow. "I know. I'll go. But Merlin's beard, do you owe me."

Alicia squeezed my shoulder. "That's what everyone else said." She yawned. "It can't be all that bad. We had later nights paired with earlier mornings when we were still at Hogwarts."

At six o'clock in the morning, though, Alicia seemed to be reconsidering this notion, if the number of times she hit the snooze button was any indication.

"Why did I do this to myself?" she finally groaned, her voice thick with sleep.

"You've done this to everyone," I corrected her through a yawn. "I told you no good comes from nightclubs."

She attempted to pull herself into a sitting position and failed. "It's not so much a result of going to a nightclub so much as it is a result of my apparent inability to read a calendar."

"Excuses, excuses."

The alarm clock rang again and Alicia slapped the snooze button and made a sad sort of whine that reminded me a bit of a tire with a leak. "I don't suppose you'd want to shower first?" she said in a rather pathetically hopeful sort of voice.

"Absolutely not, you're the one who scheduled this hike. I have a rightful claim on the second shower."

Alicia grumbled as she staggered out of bed. "Traitor."

"It's fair and you know it." A pillow landed on my face. "Are you really trying to alienate someone who is getting up very early to join you on a hike that you scheduled the morning after you forced that very same person to go to several nightclubs?"

"Yeah, yeah, you're practically a saint," said Alicia.

"I'm going to assume that you're making poor choices because you're overtired. Which is really quite generous of me, considering."

She blew a raspberry at me and slouched into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. I rolled over, snuggling down into the covers. Sleep pulled heavily at the corners of my eyes and it wasn't long before I was drifting off.

I fell into that sort of intense, dreamless sleep that makes you feel all strange and groggy when you wake up, like your muscles rearranged themselves while you were sleeping and are still sorting themselves out. Alicia shook me awake some time later.

"Come on, we're due to meet the others at eight fifteen," she said. Her hair was still wet and a drop of water landed on my face.

"What time is it now?"

"Quarter of. And don't forget to wear a swimsuit, there's a gorgeous lagoon at the end."

In theory, everyone was supposed to meet in the hotel lobby at quarter past eight; in practice, it was ten past eight and Fred was the only one standing there, looking rather tired and holding two cups of coffee. Wordlessly, he handed one to me.

I tried to remind myself that there was nothing to read into that.

"You have to let me pay for this," I told him.

"No I don't," he said cheerfully.

"Fred, at this rate, I'm going to amass such a coffee debt to you that it will be inherited by my descendants."

He grinned and shrugged, taking a sip of his own coffee. "I've always fancied having a legacy. Lord of Coffee sounds rather intriguing, don't you think? Or perhaps Coffee Benefactor?"

I turned to Alicia. "You need to help me preempt him. Tomorrow, we wake at dawn and put a stop to this madness once and for all."

"I refuse to be involved in any plan that involves waking up at dawn," yawned Alicia.

"Are you really going to make that claim when you woke me up at six this morning?" I arched my eyebrow and took a sip of my coffee. It was just as good as it had been on Monday. "This is on top of the fact that you dragged me to multiple nightclubs last night. Seems you owe me several favors."

Alicia made a face and changed the subject, which was generally a sign that I had won whatever argument we were having. "I notice that your principles haven't prevented you from drinking your ill-gotten coffee."

I shrugged and took another sip. "You know I can't function properly otherwise. In order to plot paying off my coffee debt, I must first add to my coffee debt."

"Bit of a dragon and the egg scenario, that," said Fred with a wry sort of grin.

"Rather devious system you've devised. Though this does afford me the opportunity to collect on debts that Alicia owes me for dragging me to places I'd rather not be."

Fred raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what exactly do you have against hikes?"

"Nothing. It's more that I'd rather be sleeping at this particular moment in time. Surely you can relate, you got in the same time I did."

I felt my cheeks flush as I realized that I had inadvertently referenced the fact that we had walked home together—a walk home that had included me, the picture of elegance, vomiting into a rubbish bin, a vision I was hoping that Fred would forget sooner rather than later. But if any of this bothered Fred, he didn't seem to show it. Not that I expected him to. Probably, he hadn't given me a second thought after we'd said goodnight. Which was for the best, of course.

"I've no idea what you're talking about. There's absolutely nothing I love more than a brisk early morning hike to wake me up and cure that pesky hangover," he said with a cheeky sort of grin.

"I don't believe you."

His grin widened and he took a sip of coffee. "I'd never lie." Alicia snorted and he shot a stern look in her direction. "Your commentary was neither requested nor appreciated, Miss Spinnet."

"My commentary is delightful." She poked him in the arm. "What's the time? I haven't got a watch."

Fred glanced at his watch. "Quarter past."

Alicia made a face. "Well, now I'm starting to worry. We're due to start this hike in fifteen minutes. Where is everyone?"

"I'm not sure about the others, but Lee said he'd be down in five minutes."

"And how long ago was that?"

Fred shrugged. "Fifteen minutes, give or take."

Alicia sighed. "Ten Galleons says he sat down on his bed for 'just a moment' and fell asleep sitting up."

"Oh, there's no question."

She gave him a grim sort of smile. "Can I borrow your key?"

He took his room key from his front pocket and dropped it into her hand. "Might want to check on the others as well."

"Oh, I will," said Alicia as she stalked off.

Had I been more awake, I would have formulated some excuse to follow Alicia or perhaps invented something that I just realized I'd left back in our room. Anything to keep me from being alone with Fred, especially with the way his hair was all tousled and slightly damp from his shower, the way I kept noticing his heather grey t-shirt clung to his torso, the lean corded muscles of his arms—

_Get it together, Maggie._

"So, Alicia's been talking about this hike like it's on par with winning the lottery or receiving a personal visit from Father Christmas," I said, taking a sip of my coffee and hoping my voice didn't sound too squeaky or too nervous or like I was trying to distract myself from anything in particular.

Fred raised an eyebrow, a sly smile tugging at his lips. "Worried about what you've signed up for?"

"I mean, most of this holiday has been me worrying about what I've signed up for," I said shrugging. "Case in point: last night."

"Oh, go on, the nightclubs weren't all that bad."

"I'll concede that I still have all my limbs and I don't appear to have any communicable diseases." I frowned. "That I know of, anyway."

His smile widened. "Admit it: you had fun."

"I will neither confirm nor deny the presence of fun."

His eyes twinkled like he knew better. "I think you're having me on a bit," he said. "But regardless of whether or not you're exaggerating, surely a hike can't possibly be as objectionable."

I took a sip of my coffee. "I'm not a particularly good outdoorsperson."

"I have a hard time believing that. You look utterly professional."

"I do own one athletic outfit, as you can see." A smile tugged at my lips. "I'm going to let you in on a secret though: this is made of a special fabric that wicks away sweat, but it tends to have more useful functionality to me in that it makes it easier to clean up ice cream that I've spilled on myself while eating directly from the container."

Fred laughed. "Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing and not a work of genius?"

"It's not exactly the sort of thing you typically hear functional adults say."

"Well, more's the pity for that." He grinned and took a sip of his coffee. "The hike does sound rather excellent, though. We go on horseback for a bit and then hike up to a waterfall with a lagoon that's supposed to be excellent for swimming."

"Hmm." I pressed my lips together. "Well. I like the part about the horses."

"Well, of course, you possess a beating human heart, do you not?"

I sighed. "Fred. When did you go through my luggage? That was supposed to be private."

Fred very nearly spat out a mouthful of coffee and it was one of the most rewarding things I've ever witnessed.

"That's payback for all your cream of wheat jokes on Monday," I said as he attempted to regain his composure.

He coughed and laughed. "Oh, go on. You've had a full forty-eight hours and several drinks to dull the memory of those images, surely I don't deserve such an ambush."

I shrugged and took a sip of my own coffee. "Turnabout is fair play, Weasley."

It occurred to me in that moment that while Fred probably wasn't flirting with me, I was definitely flirting with him. This realization struck me with a sudden and sick sort of feeling. I was being absurd. It was one thing to be occasionally (or, let's be honest, frequently) caught off guard by Fred's natural charm; it was another thing entirely to actively flirt with him. It was so ill-advised that it bordered on self-destructive—it wouldn't lead me anywhere good.

So it was a good thing, then, that Alicia interrupted our conversation when she did, wandering back with a sleepy looking Lee in tow. Maybe the presence of other human beings would help keep me on the straight and narrow path.

Maybe.

"The universe owes me ten Galleons," said Alicia as she rejoined us. "He was out cold and snoring."

Lee shrugged sleepily. "As I've explained, I really can't be blamed for this."

Alicia rolled her eyes. "No, you never can, can you?"

"Look at this face," said Lee, widening his eyes and looking at her with an angelic sort of expression. "Does this look like the face of someone who deserves blame?"

"It's hard to take you seriously when you've got toothpaste on your upper lip."

Lee wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugged. "Well, I tried." He seemed to register the fact that both Fred and I had coffee and sighed. "I'm really trying not to take it personally that the two of you have left me out of your little coffee pact."

I shrugged. "You can blame Fred for that. I now owe him two coffees and I'm beginning to question his motives for racking up my coffee debt to him."

Fred looked completely unbothered. "I am a madman who cannot be stopped. Though I'm rather concerned by how quickly you sold me out, Maggie. I thought you Hufflepuffs were supposed to be loyal."

I gave him a wry smile. "You lot have underestimated us for hundreds of years. Didn't you ever wonder if it might be a long con?"

I was flirting again.

_Dammit, Maggie._

But my second set of rescuers had arrived: George and Angelina, both looking utterly exhausted.

"I swear on Dumbledore's tomb, Alicia, this hike had better be worth it," said Angelina, rubbing her back. "I'm knackered and my back is killing me."

"I should think that making one of your nearest and dearest friends deliriously happy during her wedding week is well worth it," said Alicia, wrapping her arms around Angelina and planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

Angelina looked rather put out. "I'd shove you away, but I'm too exhausted to summon the energy."

I extended my coffee cup to her. "D'you need to smell my coffee again?"

Angelina's eyes widened. "Yes." She shrugged off Alicia and reached for my coffee, holding it up to her nose and inhaling deeply. "It's official: Maggie is my favorite person on this holiday, possibly in the world."

George looked mildly affronted. "On Monday you were swearing your loyalty to her and now she's your favorite? At a minimum, we should be tied for first place. I am the father of your unborn child, after all."

"Don't worry, love, I'm sure Maggie will raise our child like he or she is her own," said Angelina, patting George on the shoulder.

"I will be an excellent father," I said in my most reassuring voice. George couldn't quite keep a straight face and started laughing.

"You laugh, but don't think I haven't considered it," said Angelina, handing me back my coffee. "I bet Maggie doesn't leave dirty socks under the bed."

"What can I say, I'm quite the catch," I said, shrugging and taking a sip of my coffee.

" _Finally_ ," sighed Alicia. Katie and Oliver had arrived. They were a study in contrasts: Katie looked rather pale and tired, a far cry from her usual bubbly self. Oliver looked completely fine—in fact, he almost looked well rested.

"Ready?" he asked, sounding almost chipper.

"How are you not exhausted?" I asked.

"He's a bloody automaton," said Katie, shooting Oliver a rather stern look. "It's a little infuriating."

Oliver shrugged. "It's partly diet and exercise, partly genetics."

I made two mistakes then: I took a sip of my coffee and I glanced at Fred. His eyes sparkled with mischief and I knew immediately that I was about to be in trouble.

"Pushups," he mouthed.

To my credit, I didn't spray coffee out of my nose, though there was a moment where I thought I might.

"I don't even want to know, do I?" asked Alicia, clapping me on the back. I shook my head, eyes watering.

"It's a long story," said Fred simply, shrugging and taking a casual sip of his coffee. He caught my eye again. "What was it you were saying about turnabout and fair play, Maggie?"

He was giving me the sort of smile that conjured butterflies in my stomach and made it easy to forget that I wasn't going to flirt with him. It wasn't exactly a dangerous sort of smile—I wasn't about to hand over the information to my bank accounts or anything like that—but it made me feel a little reckless. Maybe it wasn't as impossible as I thought, maybe I was selling myself short.

Fortunately, I was going to get a rather sobering reality check when we arrived to check in for our hike.

"Right, you must be the Spinnet party," said the receptionist, consulting a large datebook. She made a note and leaned back in her chair. "Yolanda! Tu cita ha llegado."

Seconds later, Yolanda breezed through the door and into the little reception area and the butterflies in my stomach immediately turned to ash. I recognized her—she was one of the leggy pretty girls who had danced with Fred at El Lirio the night before.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! Sorry this chapter is both a little later and shorter than I'd planned. In my real life job, I was planning a massive event that ended up consuming a lot of my non-work hours. This chapter was also really tricky to write and it ended up turning into something very different (and much shorter) than I thought. The next chapter will be both longer and on time, I promise! But thanks so much for sticking with me and for your feedback! In the midst of truly crazy work stuff, it was so nice to get email alerts for new reviews, followers, favorites, etc.
> 
> I made a Tumblr and a Twitter for my fanfic—I'm akabluekat on both platforms. I'm also now on harrypotterfanfiction.com as Blue Kat.
> 
> I neglected to mention this back in Chapter 3, but Dealing With Dragons is a real book by Patricia C. Wrede. It is delightful and one of my favorites—and it's quoted in this chapter.
> 
> The next chapter will be posted after the next Playing With Fire update, so let's say mid-to-late November 2018 or thereabouts.


	6. Hike

 

Yolanda had been out at least as late as I had been, but you wouldn't have known it from looking at her. The worst thing was that she didn't seem to be wearing any makeup and she still looked absolutely stunning. Her long brown hair was swept up into a sleek ponytail and her skin had a healthy sort of glow that you typically only see in advertisements for skincare products. I couldn't help but think of what I'd looked like in the mirror that morning: pale and tired, shadows under my eyes, my hair frizzing in the humidity.

Yolanda gave us a wide smile, revealing two deep dimples and two rows of perfectly straight and pearly white teeth. "Good morning!" Her gaze fell on Fred and her eyes lit up in recognition. "Hey, I've seen you before—El Lirio last night, yeah?"

Fred smiled back. "Yeah. Fancy seeing you here."

I was trying with great difficulty to remind myself that I didn't care what Fred did but Yolanda smiled back at him and I was fairly certain I was going to die.

If my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you half of what Yolanda said as we prepared to leave for the hike. I imagine that much of it related to things like safety and navigation and such—admittedly, not paying attention to this part was rather stupid of me, but in my defense, I was trying very hard not to notice the fact that she was offering these little asides that were clearly directed at Fred and he certainly wasn't doing anything to discourage her, what with the way he kept smiling and chuckling at her jokes. We walked down to the stables where we were all paired up with horses. I managed to register that my horse—a pretty chestnut mare—was called Coco, and my remaining brain cells were functioning enough that I was able to successfully swing myself into the saddle without injury or incident.

Yolanda's horse was a gorgeous mare that was such a pure and gleaming white that I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that she had a bit of unicorn somewhere in her lineage.

This felt almost too on the nose, considering my personal feelings of inadequacy in relation to Yolanda.

I suppose that Coco was the perfect horse for me, in a way: neither one of us wanted to be on this hike. Coco expressed her feelings by falling toward the back of the procession and making frequent attempts to veer from the established path in pursuit of some sort of greenery; I expressed my feelings by mostly letting her lag and wander, all the while desperately wishing that this hike would end so that I could crawl back into bed and pretend that half of today hadn't happened.

I shouldn't have read anything into Fred being nice to me; I shouldn't have allowed myself to get carried away. Now he had a bona fide opportunity to reconnect with a leggy pretty girl—and surely he'd been kicking himself for choosing to escort a vomiting basket case back to her hotel when he could have been pursuing a much better match. Yolanda was pretty and fit and she probably didn't vomit in rubbish bins because crowds made her feel like she couldn't breathe and she almost certainly didn't utilize the wicking properties of her athletic wear for cleaning up ice cream spills. She and Fred would probably spend the next few days having amazing island sex and falling in love. Eventually, he'd give her a giant ring that would look massive and perfect on her petite hands. They'd have a gorgeous and trendy wedding and a whole passel of good looking and talented children. I'd have to see them at Alicia's Christmas parties and smile politely when they told me how perfectly their perfect life was going.

Not that it mattered. Because it didn't. I wasn't attached—I'd simply got carried away with a biological response to a handsome man being nice to me on a very starry evening. That was all there was to it.

"All right?" Alicia had slowed her own horse and was waiting for Coco and me to catch up. "You look like you're a million miles away."

"Just tired," I said lightly, pulling gently on the reins as Coco made another attempt to wander off. "And Coco and I have some fundamental disagreements on navigation."

_Blame the horse. Classic, Maggie._

Alicia gave me a strange sort of half smile and I wasn't entirely sure if she believed me or not.

* * *

 

Later, when I was wincing at my sore muscles and tending to various scrapes and bug bites, it occurred to me that I ought to have asked Alicia more questions when she said she had signed us up for this incredible hike. Namely: should I really be doing this if my athletic wear is primarily used for lounging around my flat?

As I soon discovered, the answer to that question was decidedly: no, Maggie, you should not.

It started out almost deceptively easy. The part on horseback was rather undemanding and quite pleasant, even with my preoccupation with Fred and Yolanda's hypothetical future together and Coco's frequent bids for freedom. It didn't particularly matter that I'd fallen toward the back of the line—really, it was for the best because I couldn't hear Fred and Yolanda flirting, which is almost certainly what they were doing.

But then we had to leave the horses and that's when I started to regret everything.

I continued to hang toward the back of the group, lost in my own thoughts as we made our way down a well-trod path. I could hear Yolanda talking—probably about the history and geography of the area—but I wasn't really listening.

If you trace my family back far enough, I imagine you'll find my ancestors on the edge of unexplored wilderness and taking one long look at the unknown before cheerfully saying "no thank you" and returning to their fire. It was this part of my lineage that asserted itself as I picked my way among rocks, lifted myself over tree trunks, and swatted bugs away. My decision to hang toward the back of the group became less of a choice and more of a necessity as it started getting hillier and a little rougher going and my thoughts on the matter became decidedly more grim.

_This was a terrible idea. Why did I agree to this? I'm a bloody witch for Merlin's sake, I could have Apparated to the lagoon or waterfall or whatever it was and saved myself the sweat and scratches._

The others didn't seem to share my sentiments: they were adept at navigating around various obstacles and hauling themselves uphill. Even Katie with her monstrous hangover was keeping pace with Yolanda with little effort. In contrast, I was awkward and clumsy and even my briskest pace seemed too slow.

The worst part of this was that when I'd arrive at the top of a hill well behind the others, Yolanda would give me a gentle sort of smile, like she knew I was out of my depth, and ask me if I was holding up all right, which only made me feel more out of place. I began to wish that they'd just go on without me—at least that oversight would spare me the constant humiliation.

I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with Fred.

The last hill was the worst hill—in truth, it seemed less like a hill and more like a wall with a little bit of an incline, though that may be an exaggeration on my part. At this point, I'd fallen so far behind the group that by the time I arrived at the foot of the hill, Alicia—who'd been closest to me in line—was already halfway to the top.

I took a deep breath and started climbing.

It was slow going. I decided that it would be best to focus on the ground directly in front of me because I knew that no matter when I looked at the top of the hill, it would just be a reminder that I wasn't nearly as close to the end of this as I thought. I was sweaty, the blister from last night's strappy sandals was throbbing painfully and my leg muscles were already protesting.

I was considering curling up on the ground and just waiting for the wolves to come take me when Alicia called down to me.

"Hey Mags?"

I looked up at her. I was maybe about halfway up, though I felt like I should be much farther. "Yeah?"

"You doing all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine," I said, hoping that the fact that she was far away made it difficult for her to tell that I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily and hoping that I'd be devoured by wolves.

"All right. Listen, we're very nearly at the end and Angelina needs to eat something, so we're going to split the group."

I felt a little relieved. It would just likely be Alicia and maybe Lee when I finally hauled myself up to the top of the hill, gasping and smelling like a Quidditch locker room. I didn't need Fred or Yolanda to see that. I'd suffered enough embarrassment for the day.

"Sounds good," I called back to her.

She said something back to me, but I'd refocused and didn't quite catch it and it probably wasn't important. If we were near the end, that meant we were also at the lagoon. The thought of cool water on my sweaty skin gave me a new sense of purpose. Maybe I didn't need to resign myself to being devoured by wolves just yet. Probably, wolves were too sensible to try to attempt such a massive hill for such a stringy prey anyway. Were there even wolves on Las Ballenas? I wasn't sure.

It took a while to reach the top. The last part was—of course—the steepest. Someone at least had the good sense to mount an iron ring on one of the boulders and tie a rope to it so you had something to hang onto as you pulled yourself to the top. I picked up the rope. I was almost there. I was almost done.

I'd taken three steps forward when my foot slipped and I fell, skinning my knee hard against the ground.

Falling and skinning my knee was one of those things that seemed worse as an adult than it did when I was a child. When I was a child, I at least had the excuse of being a child and still somewhat new to the world; as an adult, I had over two decades of walking under my belt and (one would assume) a reasonable degree of competence at it. The adrenaline also felt worse as an adult, almost as though my body were scolding me for being so careless and reminding me that I wasn't as young as I used to be.

I lay there on the ground for a moment, panting. My knee was stinging and I could tell that I'd broken the skin.

"Maggie?"

It was a voice that I did not expect—a voice belonging to someone who I thought must have gone ahead with Yolanda. I looked up and saw Fred frowning down at me with concern. "All right?"

I couldn't put a name to what I felt in that moment. It was a mixture of things. There I was, lying flat on the ground, face flushed and sweaty, dirt on my hands, my knee likely bleeding onto the ground beneath me. There was Fred, at the top of the hill, evidently waiting for me.

_It doesn't mean anything. Get ahold of yourself._

"I regret everything about this hike," I said, willing my stomach to stop doing that stupid flip when he chuckled in response. "But I'm fine. It's just a scrape." I pushed myself up off the ground, brushing the dirt off of my shirt and pants. My knee was starting to bleed. I didn't handle blood particularly well—especially not since the War—but the cut was still minor enough that I only felt a little queasy.

"Here." Fred had started down the hill, his hand outstretched. I hesitated for a split second. The feeling of his hands hadn't exactly led me to anything resembling sensible thought and probably I was going to have to add this to my list of things that I ought to forget. But given my current predicament, I wasn't about to turn down an offer of help.

I took his hand and thought only of the earth beneath my feet as I tried again with the hill.

My feet scrabbled against the ground and I started to slip again, but Fred was there to stop me from falling, his other hand grabbing hold of my elbow and pulling me upward like it was nothing. My nose brushed against his shoulder. He smelled a bit like cinnamon and something a little woodsy.

No one had any business smelling that good. Especially after a hike.

"Thanks," I said, dropping his hand as soon as I was firmly at the top of the hill. My legs were trembling. It was probably from the adrenaline.

Probably.

"Told you these were ice cream pants." I forced a smile and wiping a hand across my sweaty brow. "I was clearly not prepared for a proper hike."

He grinned. "Honestly, a hike seems like a rather quaint way to describe that thing," he said, nodding his head at the hill. "Lee very nearly fell coming up." His mouth quirked into something like a frown. "I didn't realize you were that far behind—I'd thought Yolanda had been keeping a better eye on the line."

I shrugged, my heart pounding against my ribs and not just because of the hill. "No harm done." It occurred to me that it was just the two of us at the top of the hill. Alicia was nowhere in sight. "I'd thought Alicia said she was waiting?"

Fred raised an eyebrow. "Did you not hear her shouting that she needed to find a bathroom before her bladder exploded?"

"I must have missed that bit of poetry."

I felt a drop of moisture roll down my shin and I remembered that I was, in fact, bleeding. I looked at my knee and immediately had to look away.

"You really did a number on yourself," said Fred, his eyes going to my knee.

"I think it's worse than it looks," I said, trying to keep my voice even as I fumbled for my wand. There was a spell for this. It was a simple spell. I'd learned it during third year. But the words felt a little slippery in my head and it was difficult for me to think about anything other than the blood trailing down my leg.

"I think you need to sit down," said Fred, frowning slightly.

"I'm not great around blood," I said.

"I'd gathered as much when you started going all pale." His smile was wry and his hands were on my shoulders again, which certainly wasn't doing me any favors as far as dizziness was concerned. "Come on, easy does it."

He helped me to the ground. I couldn't decide if the smell of cinnamon was a good distraction or not. I fumbled for my wand again once I was sitting. "Fuck. What's the spell?"

"Let me." He was crouching in front of me, his own wand in hand.

"It's fine, I can manage—"

"Maggie." He'd gently taken my wand from my hand. "Do you really want to be the one to explain to Alicia that you can't stand up in her wedding because the Healers need to regrow your entire leg?"

I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to smile. "I hardly think a simple healing spell can go  _that_  wrong."

"You know very well that it's within the realm of possibility. And imagine how cross Alicia would be with  _me_  for letting you use magic you're clearly not in a state to do so."

"I still think you're overreacting."

His eyes twinkled. "Humor me. It'll only take a minute."

I might have argued more, but his hand rested gently on the side of my knee to steady me as he prepared to cast the spell and the feeling of his fingertips resting on the tender skin of the back of my knee coupled with the faint smell of cinnamon was enough to make me feel dizzy and breathless in an entirely different way. It was perhaps fortuitous that I was so bad around blood—I could at least pretend that that was the only reason why my heart was pounding as hard as it was.

He was right: it only took a minute. But it was a minute that was simultaneously infinite and too short and when his hand dropped a moment later, the skin where his fingertips had rested felt like it was on fire and freezing all at once.

"Why don't you take a minute?" he suggested gently as he handed my wand back to me and pocketed his own.

I nodded, though I wasn't agreeing strictly because of my thing about blood. "All right."

He sat down next to me, his knees bent slightly and his arms clasped loosely around them. I examined my previously injured knee. He'd cleaned up the blood and the skin was a little pinkish and shiny where I'd skinned it, but he'd done a nice job. In a day or so, you wouldn't be able to tell.

"Well, I don't think we'll have to operate after all," I said.

"Told you," he said, giving me a slow sort of smile that had me thinking again about his hand on my knee. I rolled my eyes and drew my knees to my chest, willing my heart to stop pounding so hard, like we were on the verge of something impossible.

"You've been awfully quiet," he said after a moment. "Coffee wearing off?"

"A bit."

The fact that he'd noticed my silence meant nothing. He was being kind and that's all there was to it.

Another minute ticked by. "I hesitate to ask this," he said.

I gave a short laugh. "Fred Weasley hesitating. I never thought I'd see the day."

He flinched—just for a microsecond—but I knew that look, I knew that I'd inadvertently struck a sore spot, one that hadn't existed before he'd been trapped under stone and earned the scar that snaked up his back.

"Sorry," I said quickly. "I—I didn't mean to…"

He looked surprised, like he hadn't expected me to notice and now I felt like in acknowledging it, I'd made it worse, I'd stumbled into territory that was too private, too intimate.

"I just…you flinched and…" I swallowed. " I dunno, it reminded me…whenever my brother comes up, whenever someone talks about Evan…" I took a deep breath. "There's always a moment, you know? Like someone's snapped a rubber band against your wrist. It only hurts for a moment but it surprises you and your eyes sting a bit, but you smile and press on because it's been five years and you're not supposed to be quite so broken." I looked at him and I couldn't quite gauge his expression. "I dunno…maybe that's just me."

"No, it's not that," he said. He paused and ran a hand through his hair, a rather strange sort of half-smile pulling at his lips. "I suppose…no one's ever said that to me before but…yeah. That's exactly what it's like."

The entire world felt still and small, like it was just the two of us on the forest floor. My heart was beating hard in my chest and I wasn't certain if it was because we'd struck on this common experience that felt so lonely or if it was because I desperately wanted him to kiss me and was also afraid what would happen if he did. I could feel his eyes on me and I wasn't entirely sure what that meant.

"What were you going to ask me?" I said after a moment. "Before I interrupted."

This seemed to break the spell. "A question that could very well not be my business."

I looked at him, my head tilted slightly to the side. He was looking at me with an expression that I couldn't quite name—curious but guarded.

"Well," I said. "Go on."

"Your thing about blood—was that something that you had before?"

He was being careful—either for himself or for me, I wasn't sure which. But no matter who it was for, it made me feel like I didn't really mind telling him the truth.

"Yes," I said, absently picking at the cuticle of my thumb. "It wasn't quite as bad…something like this probably wouldn't have bothered me as much."

There was more to it than that. A lot more. And ordinarily, I would have been content to leave it at that, to wait out the silence until something else came up. But instead, I found that the words were not only there, but they were waiting to be spoken aloud.

And I almost did. I was taking a breath to say that next part—the hard part—when I heard the sound of footsteps and suddenly Yolanda was walking into view, still looking fresh faced and perfect.

"Ah, you made it!" she said brightly. "I was starting to worry about you."

"Just needed a minute," I said, offering a tight sort of smile in return. I was immediately furious with myself. The hike up the hill had clearly affected my judgment. What was I thinking? I'd spent the morning dealing with the consequences of my inflated expectations and here I was, walking right into the same trap again. Today would end with Fred in Yolanda's bed. No conversation on the forest floor was going to change that. There was no point in delaying the inevitable, no point in clinging to impossibilities and reading far too much into his quiet questions and gentle smiles.

"I think I'm ready to head out, though," I said, getting to my feet. "I'm covered in sweat and swimming sounds absolutely divine."

More importantly, I needed to clear my head before I did something stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, you lovely people! You make my day, I really hope you know that. Thank you so much for your kind support of this fic!
> 
> One minor correction: my author's note for the last chapter states that the book Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede is quoted in Chapter 5. This is incorrect—it's not in Chapter 5. It may be in an upcoming chapter, but in the process of writing this one, some plot points shifted slightly, so now I'm not sure.
> 
> This chapter ended up going in a much different direction than I initially thought it would and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Would love to hear what you think!
> 
> I hope to have Chapter 7 up sometime in mid-December 2018.


	7. Insomnia

 

Despite the fact that Wednesday was an extended series of mistakes, it did not end with Fred in Yolanda's bed.

I expected it to, of course. I expected contact information to be exchanged, I expected him to not turn up for dinner that evening, I expected him to be conspicuously absent when we brought cheap beers and ice cream down to the beach to watch the sunset.

But if any contact information was exchanged, I didn't witness it, he was there for dinner that evening, and he chucked a Frisbee around on the beach with Uncle Pete, Lee, and George until it was too dark to see.

There was a part of me that wanted to ascribe some meaning to this, the same part of me that had a tendency to cling to flimsy, far-fetched hopes with the sort of white knuckled grip that contradicted my declarations that it didn't really matter, that I wasn't invested. The sensible part of me would chime in eventually with a reminder that even if nothing happened with Yolanda, there was likely another leggy pretty girl waiting in the wings—perhaps one who was more conveniently located. Men like Fred weren't short on admirers.

Even so, it was difficult to not think about the still of the forest and the streets of Las Ballenas at midnight, our voices low and quiet, my heart fluttering in my throat.

It was difficult to sleep Wednesday night. Partly because of Fred and Fred-related thoughts, partly because my mind was often at odds with my body when it came to sleep. I was exhausted and sore from the hike and the need for sleep pulled at my limbs and the corners of my eyes, but I was wide awake.

I'd learned the hard way that it was best if I didn't think about the War on evenings like this. If I did, if I allowed my mind to wander to Evan's face, I'd be up for the rest of the night, reexamining every step I'd taken on that day in May, cocooning myself in layers and layers of new guilt until the air around me felt too thick to breathe and my vision blurred with tears. It was the most consuming sort of grief, grasping at me like a living thing, its claws digging into my heart and lungs, reminding me of my loss with every breath, with every heartbeat. I suspect if you examined my heart during those times, you would find that it was pumping out blood cells emblazoned with the message  _you have lost Evan, you have lost your brother._

Instead, I tried to think of other things, to exhaust my mind with tedious challenges. Could I name every person in my house during my seventh year? What about the lineup of the Quidditch teams? The prefects, Head Girls, and Head Boys?

Sometimes it would work; sometimes it would be enough to trick myself into dropping off to sleep. Other times, it didn't and that's when I would give up, creep out of bed, and go read until my eyes became too heavy to keep open.

I finally gave up around two o'clock. I grabbed two books from the bedside table—in the dark, I couldn't tell the difference between the book I'd just finished and the sequel I'd yet to start—and crept out of bed to the sliding glass door. I slid the door open and stepped out onto the terrace, careful not to wake Alicia as I shut the door behind me. The exterior lights were dim, but cast just enough light to see by. In the dark, I could just make out the inky black expanse of the ocean and hear the whisper soft sound of the waves lapping against the shore.

"Maggie?"

I started, my heart pounding hard in my chest. I had grown so accustomed to being awake and alone in the middle of the night that the mere sound of another human voice caught me completely off guard. I looked toward the source of the noise and found Fred sitting on one of the lounge chairs on his terrace, clad in red pajama pants and a fitted white t-shirt.

"Sorry, did I startle you?" he asked.

"A little," I said, offering a nervous sort of smile as my heart slowly returned to its normal pace. "I wasn't expecting anyone to be up this late."

"I can't say I was, either." He gave me a slightly crooked smile, pausing for just a moment. "Why are you awake?"

I shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. What's your story?"

"Mostly the same."

There was another brief pause and I shifted a bit uncomfortably, not entirely sure what to do next.

"Would you like a biscuit?" He held up a bright yellow package. "They're chocolate."

I could feel my lips curling into a smile. "Well, if they're  _chocolate_ …"

"Come on, then."

I couldn't pretend—even to myself—that I was going over there because I had a particular taste for chocolate biscuits.

The gate on his terrace creaked loudly and we both winced as I shut it behind me. I sat down on the lounge chair next to him, tucking my legs underneath me. He extended the packet to me and I fished inside for a biscuit.

"So are you often out here at two o'clock in the morning eating chocolate biscuits?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light and casual.

"Well, I don't always have chocolate biscuits, unfortunately," he said with a grin. "Although technically, these belong to Lee."

I bit into the biscuit. "Alicia doesn't keep any fun snacks in our room," I said with a sigh. "Although, I suppose I can't say I've devoted all that much time to properly looking."

"There's your first mistake," said Fred, wagging a finger at me. "I'm giving you an assignment. Tomorrow, have a look round your room and then meet me here at two o'clock in the morning to present your findings."

The possibility that he wasn't joking—that he wanted to meet me out here in the dark on purpose rather than by accident—made my heartbeat stutter in my chest.

"Well," I said, taking another bite of my biscuit to buy me a little time, "I'm going to need a diversion of some sort if I'm going to properly search the room. Are you volunteering?"

"Naturally." His eyes glinted with a familiar mischievous light and my heart sank a little: he was joking. I was silly to even entertain the thought. At least I hadn't made a total fool of myself; at least I'd been able to offer a joke of my own, no matter how feeble.

"So what are you typically doing at two o'clock in the morning if you're not eating food stolen from your roommate?" asked Fred.

"Nothing exciting," I said with a shrug. "I'll try reading for a bit, usually. That sort of thing."

He eyed the two books that I'd set next to me on the chaise, his eyebrow raised. "How long did you think you'd be out here?"

I laughed quietly. "Not that long. I've actually finished one of them, I just couldn't make out which was which in the dark."

"Ah." He squinted at the covers, chewing thoughtfully on the remaining piece of his biscuit. "Is that the dragon one you were reading the other day?"

"Yeah."

He picked up the book and flipped it over. "How'd you like it?"

"It was excellent." I hesitated for a brief second. "You can borrow it if you'd like. My offer still stands."

He looked at me, his lips quirking into a smile. "As long as you're prepared for the likelihood that it will be a while before I return it."

"It's no trouble, really."

There was a part of me—a large part of me—that was hoping that this might give me an excuse to see him after all of this was over. Maybe I could continue clinging to my silly hopes for just a little longer…even though it was likely he'd just owl it back to me.

"Well." He set the book down next to him and picked up the packet of biscuits and extended it to me. "I'll have to give you a proper book report and everything."

My stomach dropped and for a moment I hated him just a little for getting my hopes up. I took a biscuit from the packet and smiled at him. "I'm hardly that demanding as a book lender."

"Good to know," he said, taking a biscuit for himself.

There was a moment of quiet as we both chewed.

"So what about you? What are you typically doing at two o'clock in the morning when you don't have biscuits?" I asked.

"Work, usually."

I raised an eyebrow. "And you find that relaxing?"

He grinned. "Well, not relaxing, exactly. It's more that it's something to do, you know?"

"You're not doing like…actual product development and testing, are you?"

He laughed quietly. "No, learned that lesson the hard way. Just mail orders or something tedious. It has to be relatively mindless, but engaging enough to keep my attention." He hesitated for a second. "I've—er—found that it's best not to let my mind wander…"

My skin prickled, but not in an unpleasant way. We were creeping toward that sort of odd, intimate territory that we'd touched upon earlier that day in the quiet of the forest and the day before that on that bench underneath the stars.

I swallowed. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

There was a brief silence, but not an uncomfortable one. We were both waiting, watching to see what the other would do.

Fred was the first to speak. "I've never really…talked to anyone about…all of this before. Not in detail, anyway."

I cleared my throat. "I can't say I've been particularly forthcoming on the topic, either."

"What d'you think? Should we start a society? With proper badges and everything?" His smile was almost tentative, like he wasn't entirely sure he should be making the joke.

"Do you think 'I Almost Died at the Battle of Hogwarts and All I Got Were These Physical and Emotional Scars?' would fit on a badge?"

If I'd made that joke in front of my parents or in front of Alicia, I would have gotten slightly furrowed brows and small, sad sighs that seemed to say that they didn't quiet understand how I could be so strange and sharp about something so devastating, that they didn't understand some of the ways that I'd changed since that day in May five years ago.

But Fred laughed—genuinely and loudly enough that he clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the noise—and I felt something loosen deep in my chest. It was like letting out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding for the past five years.

"I'll look into production on that," he said once his laughter subsided. "I have some good contacts who can get me a good price."

"Excellent."

We were quiet again.

"I think…it's mostly that I don't want anyone to worry," he said after a moment. "Some of this—" He made a vague gesture. "—it seems…I dunno, more dramatic than it is." He chewed his lip for a moment. "It's not like I go around thinking about it all the time. It's just…"

"Some things bring it back," I said quietly, almost surprising myself.

A faint hint of a smile pulled at his lips. "Yeah."

I hesitated for a second. "There's part of me…I mean, I don't want to worry anyone. But I also…sometimes it feels like I only have so many words and if I talk about it too much now, I won't be able to testify at the trial…"

He frowned. "You're still waiting on the trial?"

I snorted. "Yes. That's a treat, let me tell you."

"I'd thought they'd finished most of the trials last year."

"They finished up with the high profile cases last year," I said. "You know, his inner circle, the Lestranges and Malfoys and such. Vi—"

I choked a bit on the name. Even now, all these years later, even with bars and chains between me and the man who almost killed me—the man who did kill Evan—I couldn't bring myself to say his name.

I think Fred probably noticed, what with the way his gaze turned all soft and gentle, but he didn't say anything.

I cleared my throat and continued like nothing had happened. "—he…erm, he wasn't particularly notable. Entry-level Death Eater, if there is such a thing. Only one managed one murder and one attempted murder before Alicia cursed the ever living shit out of him and took him hostage."

Fred frowned. "Even so, I'd have thought that they'd prioritize that over some of the others because he's still living. With the Lestranges, it was just distributing the estate to the victims."

"Yes, well, we can thank Dolores Fucking Umbridge for that." I sighed irritably. "Can you imagine being so objectively fucking terrible that your actions not only spur massive legal reform, but the reform that is prompted has to be so thorough in order to address all of the ways that you abused the legal system that it actually slows justice to a crawl?"

Fred's grin was slow and his eyes dancing with a light that made me think of him and George flying off into a sunset that so beautifully matched the purpling rage on Dolores Umbridge's face.

"I knew there was a reason I always liked you, Maggie Carlyle."

I laughed that comment off like my heart wasn't flinging itself against my ribcage in a frantic sort of overreaction. "Well, this is merely an excerpt from a lengthy letter to the editor that my mum refuses to let me send in because she thinks it would be in poor taste, even though it's my trial that's affected. Dad reckons they wouldn't print anything with that many swear words anyway."

Fred laughed quietly. I nibbled at my biscuit for a moment, trying not to think too much about the silence that settled between us.

"Do they at least have a projected date? For the trial?"

"Autumn." I sucked in a shaking breath. "They've given me estimates before and been wrong, but I think it's likely going to go forward this time."

"Are you worried?"

I knew that he wasn't asking if I was worried about the outcome. The case was fairly straightforward: there were witnesses and ample evidence. I mean, the accused had tattooed his allegiance on his forearm. There wasn't much ambiguity.

No, the hard part—the worrying part—was going to be talking about what happened. Seeing Vi—…seeing him testify.

"Yes," I said after a long moment, not quite certain if this was difficult to admit. "I know that they'll give me the option to leave the room when they bring him in but…" I took a deep breath and swallowed. "I don't know that I'll be able to leave. There's…there's some part of me that feels like I have to stay, that I have to face him or something…" I paused, not quite able to read Fred's expression. "I dunno if that makes sense."

"It does," he said. "I mean, with mine—with Rookwood—it wasn't quite the same, but there was a part of me that just…had to be in that room." He gave a grim sort of laugh. "I dunno if that's morbid curiosity or self-flagellation, but…" He shrugged. "I know what you mean."

I was quiet for a long time, picking at my cuticle, not quite certain if I was comfortable with the silence between us.

"It wasn't the curse that nearly killed me." The words fell out of my mouth so suddenly that for a moment, I almost didn't believe that I'd said them. "It was the blood loss."

Fred was watching me quietly, patient and intent. It wasn't romantic—not in the slightest—but something about his whiskey eyes on me made my heart pound hard in my chest like it meant something wonderful.

"It was…I mean, it was everywhere. I was still finding it under my fingernails and toenails weeks after."

I couldn't think too hard about it—the taste, the smell, the fact that your blood is warm but you're growing so cold—or I'd start to get dizzy.

My lips were dry. "The funny thing is…Vi—the Death Eaters…their entire reason for being was centered on this idea that that magic was the superior force in the world. But in the end, he couldn't even nearly kill me with proper magic. Just…blood loss. Ordinary biology. Completely non-magical, completely beneath him."

I paused for a moment, biting my lip. "Sometimes, I wonder if he's ever thought about that, you know?" I took a deep breath and looked at Fred. "Sometimes, I think about saying that during the trial. Just so he has to hear it. It's not exactly the most elaborate revenge plot, but…" I shrugged and suddenly felt rather exposed. I flexed my fingers against my thighs, wishing I had something to fidget with. "It's rather strange hearing that out loud…I don't think I've ever told anyone before."

Fred raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

"Really."

"Reckon that means I owe you a secret of my own."

I could feel my cheeks flushing in the dark, which I'd dismiss in the light of day as a silly overreaction. "Seems like a fair exchange."

"I'll have to think on that a bit," he said quietly. "Make sure it's a proper trade."

The air felt pleasantly electric, a line of goosebumps crawling up my spine in an enjoyable sort of way. And I think that in a perfect world, that moment would have led to a kiss, maybe more. I was starting to feel a little sleepy and slightly stupid, the sort of reckless that had me thinking that maybe if I leaned forward a bit, that might set things in motion, that maybe it wouldn't be a stupid or silly idea.

But instead, I heard the sound of a sliding glass door opening and then Alicia's voice calling out in a scolding whisper: "For fuck's sake, Maggie, I  _told_  you to wake me when this happens!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you all so much for reading, following, commenting—I'm continually delighted and surprised by your kind feedback and interest in this fic.
> 
> The next update will hopefully be in mid-January 2019, but there's a chance it might be closer to late January depending on how crazy the holidays are. I hope your holidays and your new year are happy and healthy. Thanks for making my 2018 so lovely.


	8. Chemistry

 

It was dark, but I could practically see the gears turning in Alicia's head as she looked from me to Fred and back again. I tried to keep my expression as neutral as possible, like it was perfectly normal for me to be sharing biscuits with her handsome friend after two o'clock in the morning. Whatever ideas she was entertaining—and she was certainly considering several—were surely as silly and improbable as the flights of fancy that I found myself indulging in whenever I found myself alone with Fred Weasley. I needed to be careful not to encourage her.

Mercifully, she didn't do anything that might rouse Fred's suspicions—there was no cocked eyebrow or telling smirk or winking innuendo.

Yet.

"What is this, a pre-dawn secret society?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips like her biggest concern was that we hadn't invited her.

"Well, it wouldn't be a secret society if we confirmed its existence," said Fred, with a sort of put-upon sigh that suggested he was weary of explaining this to people.

"You kept our secret society a secret from me?" I said, taking the package of biscuits from him and helping myself to another.

Fred sighed again. "Maggie, did I not just say I can't talk about this in front of Alicia?"

Alicia squinted at us from across the terrace. "Do you have  _biscuits_?"

Fred raised an eyebrow. "Yes, but there's no need to sound so judgmental about it."

"I'm not judging, I'm jealous," said Alicia, her expression shifting to a slight pout. "I'm starving and we don't have any snacks in our room."

"Maggie mentioned that," said Fred, folding his arms across his chest. "That's some questionable judgment on your part, Alicia."

"The polite thing to do would be to offer me one," said Alicia, giving him a reproachful look.

Fred sighed and shook his head. "I was getting to that. Come over here before you wake everyone up."

There was a small, stupid part of me that felt a little sad when Fred made this offer, like it proved that I wasn't special, that I wasn't the only woman in the world who he offered biscuits to at two o'clock in the morning. Though honestly, if I'd been behaving sensibly, I wouldn't have read anything romantic into what was clearly just a simple, friendly gesture in the first place. It was my fault for getting my hopes up; this was clearly the reminder that I needed.

"And I have things to say to you, Miss Maggie," said Alicia as she deftly navigated the squeaky gate and came to join us on Fred's terrace. "I have told you time and time again to wake me when this happens."

I took a deep breath and gave her a level stare as Fred handed her the package of biscuits. "And I've told you time and time again that there's absolutely no reason for me to wake you because I'm fine. It's just a bit of insomnia."

Alicia gave an exaggerated sigh and looked at Fred. "Tell me, Fred: do you do this to people who love and care about you and are rightfully concerned about your health?"

Fred shrugged. "Yeah, more or less." He caught my eye and winked when she wasn't looking, and my stupid heart fluttered in my throat like I hadn't just reminded myself that all of this meant nothing.

Alicia turned the biscuit package over in her hands and frowned. "Don't these belong to Lee?"

"I mean, if you want to get technical about it," said Fred.

She gave us both a grim smile before reaching into the package. "Don't tell him I took any. He gets weirdly fussy about sharing these, like they're some sort of precious commodity and not available at every Tesco."

Fred made a face as Alicia handed the package back to him. "Wish I'd known that before I seized them for my own use." He looked at the open package and shrugged before reaching inside to take another. "Ah, well."

"He'll get over it, he always does," said Alicia, taking a bite of her biscuit. She chewed for a moment, regarding me thoughtfully. "Well, I suppose I can go back to bed if you've got a secret society to look after you." Her expression turned stern once more. "Though I'm still not pleased with you, Marguerite Adrienne."

Fred gave a low whistle. "Oof. Full name. You're in trouble now, Maggie."

"Eh, she's all talk," I said with a shrug, giving Alicia the sort of smug smile that was designed specifically to antagonize her.

She rolled her eyes and turned to Fred. "I suppose I can't rely on you to promise me that you'll tell me if she sneaks out here again while you're awake."

Fred scoffed. "Of course not. That would be violating several statutes of our secret society. I can't betray Maggie."

My stupid stomach flipped again.  _It's a joke, Maggie. Stop it. It doesn't mean anything._

Alicia stuck out her tongue and leaned over to take another biscuit from the package. "The two of you deserve each other."

Fred's grin was cheeky. "Of course. Why do you think we formed the secret society?"

She rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively at us as she sauntered back to our terrace. "Behave yourselves. Don't eat too many biscuits. I'm going to bed."

"I think she's jealous," said Fred in a stage whisper to me, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

Alicia stuck out her tongue. "Goodnight."

"Extremely jealous," I added in the same low voice.

Alicia paused long enough to blow us a raspberry before opening the sliding glass door and stepping inside. The door slid shut, leaving us again in that intimate quiet. For a moment, I wasn't sure what to do—obviously I'd been reading too much into things before Alicia had wandered out. Probably, it made the most sense for me to make my excuses and go back to my own bed.

"Is she always like that?" asked Fred with a small smile.

It was his smile that undid me a bit, that tethered me to the terrace and had me thinking once again about possibilities that only existed underneath the soft light of the stars.

"About my insomnia? Yeah, more or less." I drew my knees to my chest. "I understand where she's coming from but…" I shrugged. "I never wake her if I can help it."

"D'you not want company?" he asked, his lips quirking upward slightly.

"No, it's not that…" I hesitated for just a moment. "It's…well. It's complicated."

"I've got time," he said. His voice was soft, the low sort of murmur that you use to tell secrets and say things that scare you. "If you want."

I sucked in a deep breath. The 'why' of all of this was complicated and intimate. It was the path leading into the heart of a twisted thicket full of shadows and demons that I couldn't quite conquer, even five years later. It was tugging at a thread that could unravel me.

But strangely, the prospect of going down that path, of tugging at that thread didn't seem as daunting out there on the terrace with the hushed sound of ocean waves and starlight reflecting in Fred's whiskey eyes.

It didn't feel like the sort of thing that might break me.

"It's…well…it's always felt like the sort of thing that I should have to handle on my own, you know?" I licked my lips, the words feeling strange and sharp in my mouth. "It's…it's guilt, I suppose, or something like it."

I expected him to understand—that's why I said it—but at the same time, I was surprised by how kind his eyes were.

"What could you possibly have to feel guilty about, Maggie?" His voice was gentle, almost a whisper.

I wanted to tell him about the mistakes I'd made that had led Evan to his death, how I'd foolishly paved the path that took him away from this world, that it didn't have to turn out the way it had, if only I'd been braver, smarter, less selfish. For the first time in five years, I felt like it was maybe—hopefully—possible for me to lift a lamp against that particular lurking darkness, that it was possible to actually share that with another human being instead of sealing it inside of myself.

But the thing is that wanting to talk about it wasn't the same as being able to talk about it. I opened my mouth, but the words just weren't there. A thick, choking feeling seized my throat, almost like I was teetering on the edge of tears.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I shouldn't have asked. It's not my business."

"No, it's fine. I'm fine." I shook my head and took a deep breath. I smiled, though it felt slightly unconvincing. "It's just…I suppose…no one's ever really asked me that before. And I…I just haven't quite found the words yet."

There was more that I wanted to say. I wanted to tell him that I didn't mind sitting out here with him in the stillness of the night, that for whatever reason, talking to him like this felt right. That as much as I loved Alicia, as much as she had done for me, telling her felt like I was creating another burden for her to bear and giving her another broken part of me that she would feel compelled to try and fix. I wanted to tell him that it didn't feel that way with him, that he seemed to understand something about that day in May that no one else had.

I wanted to say all those things but saying them required a bravery that I didn't possess and surety that evaded me. And deep down, I was worried that perhaps I was being too reckless with these secrets, that I'd only said anything because it was late, and this was the first time a sleepless night hadn't felt desperately lonely.

"If you ever find the words," he said after a long moment of quiet, "you can tell me. If you want."

It's funny how just a handful of words in a particular arrangement can make your heart soar and ache at the same time. I knew that it was a kindness and that I shouldn't read anything into it but looking at him in the half-dark made me wish that it meant something more than it did.

"Thanks, Fred," I said softly.

His smile was slight, and I found myself wondering what it would feel like pressed against my lips.

"You're welcome."

I wanted so much more from that evening. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted my fingers tangled in his hair and his hands on the small of my back, his lips on my neck. I wanted him to make love to me on the terrace while the sun rose, even though it would likely be a one-off that never happened again.

I wanted everything I knew I couldn't have with a fierceness that surprised me.

But sleep was finally starting to tug at my eyes and limbs and try as I might, I couldn't quite stifle my yawn.

"Think you're starting to fade a bit," he said, another smile pulling at his lips.

"Only a little," I said. "I don't want to go in right away because Alicia's likely still awake and if she's awake, she's going to give me an earful."

This was only partly true: mostly, I wanted an excuse to stay out just a little longer.

"You mean you don't want to fall asleep to the sounds of a lecture?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow upward. "I'm shocked."

"It's not the most pleasant way to drift off," I said, picking at a bit of fuzz on my pajama pants. "Besides, I believe you still owe me a secret."

"That is true," he said, his smile fading just a bit. He was quiet for a long moment, long enough that I started to worry that I'd overstepped, that I'd inadvertently spoiled the evening.

"I can forgive that debt," I said finally, when I couldn't bear the silence anymore. "I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that."

He shook his head. "No, it's not that. I'm just…" He paused, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. "I'm trying to work out how to say this without sounding like a monster."

"I don't think it's possible for me to hold that opinion of you," I said, trying to summon the same sort of gentleness that he'd had in his voice when he asked me what I could possibly feel guilty about.

"Well." He cleared his throat. "I suppose everyone has things that they're not proud of. This just happens to be one of mine." He exhaled, puffing his cheeks out slightly. "I'm making this sound much worse than it is, probably."

I raised an eyebrow. "I mean, I did say that I felt guilty about something and then couldn't say what it was. We both sound a bit like secret serial killers."

He laughed and I realized that there was something about the way that he laughed at my darkest jokes that made my soul feel light.

"I should probably follow that up by clarifying that I'm not a serial killer. Secret or otherwise," I said, smiling wryly.

He grinned. "Me neither."

Another yawn caught me off guard. His smile widened and my heart broke a little because I knew the evening was well and truly over.

"Get to bed, Maggie," he said. "Even serial killers need their rest."

"Good thing I'm not a serial killer, then. I can stay up as late as I want."

He smiled, looking a little tired himself. "Well, clearly  _I_  need to get to bed if I'm telling jokes that don't make sense." He paused for a half moment. "I'll settle up my secret debt at a time when we're both a bit more awake."

"All right."

I stood reluctantly, trying to think of something brilliant to say, something that would recapture the magic of this evening, something that would leave him thinking of me long after I shut the sliding glass door. I tried not to wonder if his last statement was the sort of thing that should make me hope.

"Thanks for the biscuits, Fred," I offered lamely.

He smiled at me. "Any time, love."

* * *

When I woke the next morning, it was nearing ten and I was alone. A note on hotel stationery had been stuck to the lamp on my night table.

> _Morning. Everyone is having a lie-in, owing to the early departure yesterday. The plan is to spend the afternoon on the beach. I'm going to go have breakfast with Mum, Dad, and the Jordans. (I tried waking you, but you're out cold). I'll bring something back for you. xo, A_

I was grateful for the quiet—largely because it afforded me the opportunity to (once again) reflect on all the ways I had (once again) lost my head around Fred Weasley.

It hadn't been like this when we were in school together. He was handsome and a bit of a flirt and sure, I'd been attracted to him and he'd likely made me blush on one or more occasions. But I had also fundamentally understood that Fred was unattainable. He was a mansion—nice to look at, but not something I ever reasonably expected to have for myself.

But this—this was a different sort of attraction. It wasn't just the starlight and romance of a quiet evening on a Mediterranean island that made him so magnetic, though that probably didn't help: there was something about him that maybe I hadn't understood or noticed when we'd been in school.

It was the fact that these last five years had been largely absent of someone who seemed to understand everything unspoken about that day in May and the darkness and scars left behind.

I made the same vows that I had last time and the time before that: I would be careful. I would not let it happen again. I would not set myself up for inevitable disappointment—and it was inevitable, make no mistake.

But this time, I think there was a part of me that knew that I'd likely break those promises at the next available opportunity.

I took an extra-long shower, setting the temperature a few degrees hotter than it needed to be. Maybe the shock of that would somehow trick my brain into being more sensible, maybe I could scald myself into rationality.

Maybe.

When Alicia got back, I was wearing my swimsuit and new sarong and taking out my frustrations on the tangles in my hair.

"Oh good, you're awake," she said, shutting the door behind her, a brown paper bag and a cardboard coffee cup in hand. "I was worried I was going to have to douse you in ice water."

"This week is supposed to end with your wedding, not your funeral," I said archly.

"Hence my reluctance to pursue that method." She handed me the paper bag and set the coffee cup on my night table. "I got you a breakfast sandwich. Dad has been talking about it like it's a spiritual awakening. Mum says that it's adequate. Words were exchanged." She rolled her eyes. "You are going to be the deciding vote."

I removed the sandwich from its wrapper and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully while Alicia gathered her swimsuit from where she'd hung it up to dry.

"I mean…it's sausage, eggs, and cheese," I said once I swallowed. "It's good, but not like…a revelation or anything."

"As I suspected." Alicia shook her head. "I still need to shower. Plan is to meet down at the beach around noonish."

"All right."

I sipped leisurely at my coffee and nibbled at my breakfast sandwich, propping my book open on my lap. The coffee wasn't quite as good as the stuff Fred had bought me from the shop across the road, but the breakfast sandwich was starting to grow on me a bit and I started to think that maybe Uncle Pete was onto something.

"I might need to revise my opinion on the breakfast sandwich," I said when Alicia reentered the room.

"Dad will be thrilled." She took a deep breath and plopped down on her bed. "If I ask you something, do you promise you won't get angry with me?"

I looked up from my book. Her expression was calm, almost perfectly neutral. Usually she was easier to read. Even so, I had a hunch I knew what this was about.

"Depends on what it is, I suppose," I said slowly, trying to keep my own expression well in check.

"What do you think of Fred?" she said with a forced nonchalance.

My hunch had been correct.

"Fred's fine," I said, turning back to my book.

"I meant in a romantic sense," she clarified, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Why are you asking?"

"Why do you think I'm asking, Mags?'

I looked up again and found Alicia staring at me with a look that I recognized—the sort of look that meant I was not going to get out of this conversation easily, if at all.

"What, because we had biscuits at two o'clock in the morning?" I said, frowning like I still wasn't quite sure what she was getting at. "It's not like either one of us planned that."

"Even setting that incident aside," said Alicia, her expression turning too sly for my liking, "I've noticed some chemistry."

I sighed and set my book aside. She was making something out of nothing and that certainly couldn't end well. The last thing that I wanted was for her to become invested in something that clearly wasn't going to happen, not-so-subtly mention it to Lee, who would say something to Fred, and then the rest of the trip would turn into an awkward and embarrassing affair. And I certainly didn't need someone actively encouraging the part of my brain that kept becoming preoccupied with the ridiculous idea that Fred Weasley might have any sort of romantic interest in me.

"He's always been friendly," I said, my tone matter of fact. "I'm not reading anything else into that."

Alicia raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, Mags."

I snorted. "Oh please."

"I know Fred a good deal better than you do," she said, shifting so that she sat cross-legged on her bed. "The difference between Fred being friendly and Fred being flirty is subtle, but there is a difference and I have noticed it lately."

"Fred is quite out of my league, Alicia."

She threw her head back laughing and I found myself fighting a flicker of annoyance. "You can't be serious."

"Of course I'm being serious, why wouldn't I be serious?"

"Because you're a catch, Maggie," she said, raising her hands in the air like she was spelling out something wholly obvious. "If anything, you're out of  _his_  league."

I rolled my eyes. "I think you're being overly generous."

Alicia's eyebrow twitched slightly and she pursed her lips. "Or could it be that you're being too critical?"

I sighed. "I'm waiting tables because I've been too much of a mess to actually try and pursue my career, I sleep poorly and have nightmares, my family's still healing from an enormous loss. And that's not even taking my scars into account."

"You're smart, sweet, funny, loyal, gorgeous, and astoundingly unselfish," said Alicia, ticking off each item on a finger, her expression oddly intense. "You didn't emerge from the War unscathed, but I can't name a person who did. Including Fred." Her voice softened slightly. "And really, Maggie, you've got to stop acting like you're damaged goods."

I flinched. She had found the crux of the matter, the truth that I had been trying to bury in my excuses and clever turns of phrase.

"I'm not acting like I'm anything," I said, hating the way that my voice wavered ever so slightly, the way it always does when I tell a lie.

This was a lie that Alicia didn't look like she believed. "Really?" she asked, her voice rising ever so slightly in pitch. "You really think that's a fair assessment? Because I don't."

"I would never have guessed," I said, perhaps a little more sarcastically than I intended.

I hadn't realized that Alicia was trying to hold her emotions in check until whatever was holding her back had worn down to a thread. She took a deep breath and glanced at the ceiling, a sure sign she was fighting tears, anger, or both.

"I would have  _hoped_ ," she said, the edges of her voice sounding raw and rough in a way that I hadn't heard in a long time, "that you would listen to someone who cares about you very much. I would  _hope_  that you take me seriously when I say that just because you're hurting doesn't mean you don't have value."

My heart broke a little at the sight of the hurt in Alicia's eyes. The irritation and anger that I'd been feeling faded abruptly and suddenly, all I wanted was to go back to right before things started to go wrong.

"Look, I—" I took a deep breath. "Can we take a rain check on this conversation? It's your wedding week. I don't want to ruin it with my issues—"

"Maggie, you are missing the point," said Alicia sadly, her voice cracking just a bit. "You act like you think you're this walking time bomb and that you're just this massive burden to others—" She looked away from me and swallowed hard, blinking rapidly. "I just…it kills me to think that you might actually believe that about yourself."

She was right: I did think that about myself, to a certain extent: I was a mess of half-healed emotional wounds, insomnia, and guilt. I just hadn't realized that she had noticed, or that it upset her that much—which, in retrospect, was the kind of stupid oversight you make when you are tangled up in a web of your own grief.

"Listen," I said quietly, "when you and Lee get back from your honeymoon, let's set aside a time to talk about this. You're clearly very upset about this and I want to give you time to talk about it. You can shout at me and say whatever you need to say. I just…you're getting married this week. I don't want to spend that time crying and fighting."

Alicia was quiet for a moment, her gaze focused on a point on the wall, her jaw clenched. Finally, she looked back at me.

"Do you really mean that?" she asked, her voice softer than it had been before. "You're not going to try to put it off or hope that I forget?"

"I mean it," I said. "Honest. I can send an owl to your flat right now so you don't forget."

She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, before exhaling loudly through her nose. She looked at me.

"Budge over."

I scooted over on my bed and she crawled up next to me, curling up so her head rested on my shoulder. I leaned my head against hers and suddenly it was like we were seven years old again, cuddled up during a sleepover. I couldn't help but long for that time, back when things were simpler, and I was free from my scars.

"Before I agree to this, I want to make two things very clear," she said. "One: we  _are_  going to talk about this. Two…" She cleared her throat. "There's chemistry. A lot of it. I'd be surprised if I wasn't the only one who noticed. Promise me you will keep an open mind."

I held back a sigh. "I'll try."

"Good." She squeezed my arm and we were both quiet for a moment. "I love you, you know," she said after a little while. "Even though you're a bit of a dunce sometimes."

"Runs in the family, dingus," I said, nudging her. "And I love you, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I say it every time, but I'm so grateful for everyone who reads/reviews/follows/faves this fic. You are all delightful and wonderful and I really enjoy hearing from everyone. I hope your 2019 is off to a wonderful start. And please let me know what you think of this chapter--I've mixed feelings about how it turned out.
> 
> AnnieBane on AO3 had a great question: is Las Ballenas a magical place or are there Muggles? This is something that I actually keep forgetting to mention in the text, so I'm glad someone asked. Las Ballenas is kind of like Hogsmeade crossed with Ibiza: it's a very trendy island that is exclusively inhabited by wizards.
> 
> I am hoping to have the next chapter posted in mid-February 2019 or so.


	9. Wine

 

I didn't like it, but Alicia had given me a lot to think about.

Annoyingly, these weren't the sort of thoughts that were easy to look away from. Unfortunately for me, my entire post-War strategy for dealing with uncomfortable truths was based on ignoring them and pretending I was fine.

That was not an option in this scenario.

The results were about what you might expect. Though it was supposed to be a lazy day at the beach, I spent most of that time distracted, half lost in my own thoughts and trying not to think about some of the truths that Alicia had laid bare. I had been operating under the assumption that while people could certainly see that I'd changed since the Battle of Hogwarts, the uglier parts of those changes—my anxiety, self-doubt, self-loathing, and guilt, among others—were successfully masked by the fact that I intentionally avoided talking about them.

Alicia's statements from that morning proved without a doubt that this was not the case; I was not being as subtle as I'd thought. And in retrospect, it wasn't exactly a clever plan: it was a bit like thinking a new paint job will hide the fact that your house has been hit by a meteor.

The fact that this was unhealthy was not news to me. I knew that I should be talking to someone, probably a professional with some sort of advanced certification in treating these issues. But I'd also fallen into the clever trap of thinking that living with the problem was easier than trying to fix it and try as I might, I wasn't quite ready to give that notion up.

Perhaps that's why talking to Fred felt like such a relief. For one, I was actually talking about it instead of just keeping these things locked away. But perhaps more importantly, it didn't feel like an effort. There was an understanding that existed between us: we had faced (and continued to face) similar demons. I didn't have to translate anything or explain the warped logic of my particular pain or justify feelings that I knew didn't make sense because he already knew what it was like.

And maybe, maybe that was the source of my attraction to him. Maybe I'd just been silent for so long that I was mistaking the relief of being able to talk to someone for attraction.

My gaze happened to stray to him as I had this particular thought. He was working on some sort of elaborate sand structure with George, Lee, and Oliver. I tried to look at him objectively and assess how I felt in blunt, honest terms. He was laughing at something Lee had said, his head tossed back. He must have been in the water sometime recently, as his swim trunks sat low on his hips, saturated with water, and drops of water clung to the sparse line of ginger hair that trailed down the smooth, lean planes of his chest and all right, fine, there was clearly a physical component to my attraction.

"Mags, you're looking rather pink," said Alicia. "Do you need more sunscreen?"

"Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea," I said briskly, practically diving for my bag, hoping that she hadn't noticed where I'd been looking when I'd developed my sudden "sunburn."

I slathered myself in SunShield like it might somehow also protect me from being an idiot.

But even if there was a physical component—and I suppose a personal one as well because he was funny and sharp and I liked that about him—surely my attraction to him wasn't healthy, I reasoned with myself later. In the extremely unlikely event that he wanted me like that, wasn't there a danger that I might somehow unintentionally lean on him as a sort of quasi-therapist? It seemed like the sort of mistake that was easy to make when you've been hurting and bottling it up. I'd certainly read enough books where that sort of thing had happened. He understood, but I couldn't expect him to fix me—that wouldn't be fair or healthy—and there wasn't any guarantee that I wouldn't turn out to be some sort of toxic emotional succubus.

It wasn't exactly that I thought I was too damaged to be loved—though I'd be lying if I said that thought had never occurred to me—so much as I was afraid that my capacity to love was damaged in some critical way. If someone was able to get past all of the ways that I was broken and damaged, could I love them in a way that wasn't also a little broken and damaged?

It was this question that occupied me for the rest of the day, though I suppose I did a decent job of hiding it. After dinner, I excused myself and went for a walk on the beach, largely to give myself time and space to think without worrying about hiding what I was thinking about.

It ended up being a rather long walk.

When I finally trudged back to the hotel, it was dark and I was fully anticipating a lecture from Alicia about being out too late by myself.

Instead, when I went to open the sliding glass door of the terrace, I found a hair tie looped around the handle.

Alicia and I had shared a flat until about six months ago when she'd moved in with Lee. When she had Lee over or on one of the handful of occasions when I had a date, we used a very primitive communication system to warn each other: we put a hair tie on the bedroom doorknob. It was simple and reasonably discreet.

And in this case: entirely unwelcome, as it meant that I was now locked out of my room.

I stared at the hair tie for a moment, noting that the windows were shut and the curtains were drawn.

I sighed. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

There was a brief moment where I considered walking in anyway, just to prove a point, but I quickly decided that in the unlikely event that they'd left the door unlocked, none of us really needed the trauma.

"All right?" asked a voice from one of the adjacent terraces.

I'd been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn't noticed Fred. He was sitting out on his terrace in the same chair he'd sat in last night, wearing his pajamas and holding a glass of wine. My heart leapt into my throat and that familiar half-giddy, half nervous sort of feeling overcame me.

I tried to act like I wasn't feeling any of that and instead slumped against the wall with a rather dramatic sigh. "I've been sexiled."

He raised an eyebrow. "Lee told me he was going over to iron out some last-minute wedding details with Alicia."

"Well, he's ironing out  _something_  with Alicia." I plucked the hair tie from the door handle and slid it onto my wrist. "How long ago was that?"

Fred shrugged. "Five or ten minutes, give or take."

I barely resisted the urge to groan. "They'll be another half hour at least. Probably closer to forty-five minutes."

A smile twitched at his lips. "That's an oddly specific estimate."

"I lived with Alicia for almost the entirety of their relationship," I said, giving him a rather grim smile. "They don't really do quickies, especially if they've been apart for a bit."

Fred made a sour face. "Maggie Carlyle, I did  _not_ need to know that."

I shrugged, folding my arms across my chest and giving him a coy smile that was probably more flirtatious than was strictly wise. "You asked."

"Technically, that was a statement, not a question."

"Fine: you made that horrible cream of wheat, bananas, and post coital pushups joke which provided me with a plethora of images that continue to haunt me to this very day," I said, raising an eyebrow and almost daring him to one-up me. I received a rather devious grin in return.

"Did you notice he ordered bananas foster at dinner?"

Distracted as I had been at dinner, I had noticed—when Oliver placed the order, I'd glanced at Fred almost without thought. It had only taken a slight lift of his eyebrows and the hint of a smirk to set me off—I had to pretend to have a coughing fit into my napkin.

"That wasn't funny," I said, though I was having a hard time hiding my smile now.

He gave me a rather skeptical look. "I didn't even say anything. That was  _your_  filthy mind at work, Miss Carlyle."

"Oh, you were no innocent party, sir. You gave me a look with a very clear message."

The look he was giving me now was rather similar: a little too sly and entirely mischievous. "Did you notice that their curtains and windows are also shut?"

I put my hands on my hips and smirked back at him. "The curtains and windows in your brother's room are also shut, did you notice that?"

It was worth it for the look on his face alone. "That is a dirty, underhanded trick, Maggie. I don't know whether I should be horrified or impressed."

"Let's go with impressed."

"I dunno, horrified might be winning out."

I grinned. "I think you're being overdramatic. Angelina  _is_  pregnant, after all. That's a fairly obvious indication that that sort of activity is taking place."

"Yes, but I'd rather not  _think_  about it. Especially not the details of where and when it's happening." He shuddered again.

I raised an eyebrow. "You need to toughen up. It could be much, much worse."

He pulled a face. "How?"

"Alicia and Lee have—on  _several_  occasions, mind—forgotten to use silencing charms while I was also in the flat."

"Ugh." He shuddered again and took a long drink from his glass of wine. "Add that to my list of things I'd rather not think about."

"At least you've got wine to help you cope."

He frowned at the liquid still remaining. "Think I'm going to need more than this."

"Maybe get another bottle or twelve."

He gave me a crooked sort of grin that had me feeling a little lightheaded and a little more than grateful that I was leaning up against a wall. "D'you want a glass?"

I suddenly felt like I'd swallowed a flock of hummingbirds. "That depends. What sort of wine is it?"

"It's red. It's good." He paused, seeming to think. "…and really, that represents the extent of my knowledge."

I tried to hide a smile. "Hmm. Interesting."

His grin turned a little sly again. "I can also offer you seating that is farther away from your cousin having scandalous premarital sex."

"That is a compelling argument."

"Thought it might be." He stood, setting his glass on the little table next to his chair. "Come on. I'll get you a glass."

There was a half second—less than that, even—where I hesitated. Going over there would not be a good idea, at least as far as distancing myself from him and forgetting about all the things that I'd meant to forget from the night before (and the night before that). But the reality was that I didn't have anywhere else to go, I liked wine, and I enjoyed Fred's company. Arguably, I enjoyed his company too much, but I wasn't about to try and convince myself to turn down his invitation.

So again, I made the short journey from my terrace to his, sitting down on the unoccupied chair on the terrace and crossing my legs underneath me. He returned with another wineglass and filled it.

"Cheers," I said as he handed me the glass.

"So, any particular reason you're wandering the beach alone at night?" he asked as he sat back down on his chair, picking up his own glass from the table.

I took a sip of my wine, hoping that no telltale blushes or guilty glances would give me away. "Oh, just doing some thinking, nothing terribly exciting." I cleared my throat. "What about you? What have you been up to this evening?"

He shrugged, sipping lazily at his wine. "Nothing in particular. Thinking."

"Well. This has been a fascinating conversation."

He caught my eye and gave me a teasing sort of grin. "My evening hasn't been particularly fascinating, unfortunately. I've nothing thrilling to report."

I smiled. "I suppose I can't fault you that."

There was a moment of quiet as we both sipped at our wine. He was right: it was good. It had a nice, subtle flavor to it that felt rather perfect for an evening like this.

"Your knee's looking better," he said.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't immediately hope that he'd noticed because he was eyeing my legs.

"Yeah, you can't even tell," I said lightly. "Seems you're quite good at healing charms."

He gave me a slow smile that turned my insides to the approximate consistency of molasses. "Well, in my line of work, it's good to know a thing or two about treating superficial injuries."

I laughed quietly into my wineglass. "I suppose that's true."

"That and growing up with six siblings."

"You could've been a Healer."

"Nah. I never cared much for hospitals, even before the War."

We were—once again—standing at the edge of something that felt important and also a little scary. I wanted him to say more, but I didn't want to ask and end up prying into what wasn't my business.

"Yeah?" I said, hoping he would elaborate.

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "It may surprise you to hear this, but I've never been particularly fond of rules."

"This is new and shocking information."

He chuckled and I found myself relaxing slightly, like I'd been waiting for him to say that it wasn't my place to ask such a personal question.

"I wouldn't have done well in that sort of environment," he said. "It's too precise and regimented. I like a little spontaneity." His smile faded slightly. "Being there for so long didn't exactly help matters, either."

I hesitated for just a second before I asked, "How long were you there?"

"Two months." He looked at me, his eyes soft. "You?"

"Six months."

He raised an eyebrow. " _Six_  months?"

I nodded, swirling the wine in my glass, mostly to give my hands something to do. "Might've been six months and a week, if I'm being precise."

"I started feeling like I was going to crawl out of my own skin after six weeks," he said. "How did you manage six months?"

I gave him a dry sort of smile. "Well, I was in a magically induced coma for about two months, so that part was easy."

He winced. "I put my foot in my mouth, didn't I?"

There was something oddly comforting about Fred being the one to bring up some War-related topic and stumble inelegantly. It made me feel a bit more human and a little less awkward.

"It's fine, really," I said, and I truly meant it. "Honestly, that was probably the easiest part of the entire experience. At least from my side of things. It was gut wrenching for my family, especially with my brother…" I swallowed hard and cleared my throat. "Well. They were dealing with a lot. But from my end, those two months were rather nice—better than being asleep, certainly, because I couldn't dream." I gave a short, bitter laugh. "That didn't take, unfortunately."

Fred was quiet for a moment. "Nightmares?" he said finally.

I nodded. "Yeah."

He leaned forward, his elbows perching against his knees, hands clasped loosely together under his chin. I looked away from him, not wanting to seem like I was staring or intruding on whatever moment he was having.

"Do you have them often? The nightmares?" he asked.

I could hear everything unsaid in that question.

"Not as many as I used to," I said, my fingers fiddling nervously with the chain of my necklace. "It was worse, right after."

I chanced a glance at him. He was staring off into the distance, a muscle in his jaw twitching slightly. Something about this—the way that he was sitting there quietly—gave me the courage to ask the question that was poised on my lips.

"Do you?"

He swallowed, his eyes still fixed on some point in the distance. "Yeah."

"Has it gotten better?"

He shrugged. "Hard to say. They don't come as often as they did at first, but…" He paused, the muscle in his jaw twitching again. "They're still bad enough to wake me up."

"I'm sorry," I said softly.

"'S all right," he said, taking a deep breath and smiling in a way that felt a little forced. "I've lived with it long enough that I can manage."

A grim sort of half-laugh fell from my lips before I could stop it. "Yeah. I know the feeling."

He chuckled and took a drink from his glass and it occurred to me that if anything was ever going to happen between us, it would have to be in an extraordinary circumstance like this: nearing midnight on a Mediterranean island, our lips stained dark with wine and our faces glowing with a thin sheen of sweat. Me, in a tank top and shorts that made my legs look long and tanned; him in his pajamas, his shirt untucked, hair slightly tousled. Both of us a little sadder and lonelier than we'd ever admit to ourselves, let alone anyone else. The sex would be slow and more intimate than it should be for a one-night stand. We would never speak of it again.

But the thought passed and suddenly my cheeks were flushing. I took a long drink from my glass. It was a stupid thing to even think. I was losing my senses in the sand and sun. I'd be back in London soon, back to solid ground.

"I still owe you a secret, if I'm not mistaken," he said after a moment.

"Only if you want to tell me," I said. "Like I said, I'm willing to forgive that debt."

He was quiet, seemingly lost in thought, his thumb rubbing the edge of his wineglass.

"I think…the hardest thing—" He took a deep breath. "Well, it's one of the hardest things, anyway." He paused again, worrying his lower lip between his teeth and looking like he was trying to collect his thoughts.

"My entire life, I've shared just about everything with George," he said, finally. "I've more memories with him than I have without him. And the hardest thing about…all this—is that it's something that I have to experience without him, to a certain extent."

His eyes were fixed rather stoically on that point in the distance and I got the feeling that telling me this was harder than he was letting on.

"You don't really know what it's like to almost…" He swallowed, like he couldn't quite bring himself to acknowledge the fact that he had come face to face with his own mortality. "Not until it happens, anyway. And it's difficult because it changes you in ways that you can't quite explain to someone who hasn't and it's not the easiest journey to make alone and sometimes…" He gave a grim sort of laugh. "…And this is where I'm going to sound a bit like a monster, but sometimes I find myself wishing that he'd been there with me so I'd have someone to talk to."

"I think that's a rather unfair way to look at it," I said quietly.

"I don't. It's selfish, isn't it? Wishing an almost death and generally horrible experience on your brother and best friend just because you're a bit cut up about it."

"I don't think you're really wishing for that, though. Carrying this sort of thing around…" I took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. "It's a lot. It's more than being 'just a bit cut up.' You're right that it's a lonely experience and making it less lonely…it's just exhausting having to explain something that has no logic. And it's especially hard if you're trying to explain it to someone you're close with. It's like there's suddenly this massive abyss between you that wasn't there before and it's just…strange and awful."

He was staring again at that point in the distance and I wasn't entirely sure what he was thinking.

"It's not that you're wishing horrible things on him," I continued, somewhat uncertainly. "You've just got this…thing that's hard to bear on your own but it's even harder to ask for help because it requires explaining something that you don't fully understand yourself." I paused for a second. "If that makes sense. I'm not sure it does."

"No, it does." He looked at me finally, some unreadable emotion in his eyes. "Thanks, Maggie."

I offered a slight smile in return and we were quiet again.

"It's not something I think of often," he said after a while. "Tends to be more of the 'awake-at-three-in-the-morning-and-everything's-awful' sort of thought."

I laughed quietly, taking a sip of my wine. "I'm quite familiar with that. I've probably reached expert levels at this point."

"Yeah?" His smile was slight, but he seemed to be settling back into something that seemed more like himself. "As an expert, how do you manage that?"

I exhaled. "Oh, you know. Bottle it up inside, pretend it doesn't exist. The sort of very healthy thing that they tell you not to do but you do anyway because it's easy and you're tired."

"Think we've found another slogan for our badges."

I snorted into my wineglass. "Perfect."

Another silence settled between us.

"That wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be," he said after a minute. "Telling someone, I mean."

"I'm glad," I said softly.

He looked at me and suddenly everything felt intimate and strange and unknowable. For the briefest of moments, the air between us was electric and I thought that he might kiss me, that we might go down that path that I had contemplated earlier, the one that ends in slow and quiet sex that we never speak of again. But again, the moment passed and suddenly that electric crackle between us shifted from a pleasant hum on my skin to something that felt a little more dangerous and unpredictable. Somewhere on the beach, someone let out a loud whoop and I used that as my excuse to look away from him, frowning at the shoreline like it was something that mattered, hoping that he couldn't see the fluttering of my pulse against my skin.

And really, it was just as well that the moment didn't go any further: mere seconds later, I heard the sound of a sliding glass door opening. I glanced up and saw Lee exiting my room, shutting the door behind him, and wearing a rather too smug expression that left little doubt as to what he'd been up to that evening.

His expression did not change when he noticed me sitting on the terrace with Fred.

"Sorry, Mags," he said as he came up to the gate and let himself in. He did not look at all sorry, which I expected.

"Just please tell me that you stayed off of my bed," I said, giving him a level stare.

"I'm happy to confirm that we did not desecrate your bed with our furious lovemaking," said Lee with a grin that was both too wide and too cheeky.

I looked at Fred. "If I kill him, will you help me hide the body and construct an alibi?"

Fred tipped his glass at me and grinned. "Finish your wine, you'll feel better."

"You'd really murder me for telling you that I was respectful of your personal space?" said Lee, raising an eyebrow. "That's clearly an overreaction."

"It's more the phrase 'furious lovemaking' that inspires that murderous sort of feeling," I said, taking another sip from my glass.

"My talents are wasted on you, clearly," said Lee, picking up the wine bottle and looking at it. "How is this, by the way?"

"It's good, it's got a nice flavor," said Fred.

Lee took a drink straight from the bottle and frowned thoughtfully. "Hmm. That is quite good."

I sighed. "Lee, are you trying to be the worst person on earth, or does it just come to you naturally?"

"It's talent, of course," he said with a cheeky grin, taking another drink from the bottle.

"I suppose it's a good thing I didn't want any more of that wine," said Fred rather sarcastically as he eyed Lee.

"Why not? It's quite good."

"Git," said Fred, aiming a punch at his arm.

I drained the rest of the wine from my glass. "Well, on that note, I think I'm going to turn in."

"Look what you've done," said Fred to Lee. "This is why we can't have company over."

"Oh, it's more to do with the fact that I've got to be up a bit on the earlier side tomorrow," I said, handing my glass to Lee. "Alicia's got us doing nails and brunch."

"We're not invited," said Lee to Fred. "I already asked."

Fred made a face. "Bugger."

"I'm sure you'll survive," I said. "You can sleep in knowing I'm sitting somewhere in a nail salon feeling very jealous of you."

Lee sighed. "I suppose that's some comfort."

I smiled and looked at Fred. "Thanks for the wine and the company, Fred."

"Anytime, love."

"What? No thanks for me?" said Lee with a bit of a pout.

I swatted at him. "I'll thank you when you've earned it, Lee Jordan, and not a minute sooner."

He sighed dramatically, flopping down in the chair that I'd just vacated, the bottle of wine clutched to his chest. "Brutal."

I rolled my eyes. "Goodnight."

"Night, Mags."

"G'night."

It took an enormous amount of self-control to not glance behind me as I walked from their terrace to mine. And once again, I found myself wondering about what might have happened if I hadn't looked away, if Lee hadn't opened the door when he did.

Alicia was lying in bed and flipping through a magazine when I stepped into the room, her hair slightly disheveled and her expression content.

"You couldn't wait until Saturday?" I said, shutting the door behind me and turning the lock.

"Listen, there have been very few opportunities for this and it was starting to get to me a bit," she said, apparently unable to resist giving me a smug sort of smirk. "Do you really expect me to turn down the opportunity to succumb to the carnal forces of this island?"

I made a face. "You both get disgustingly poetic post coitus, have you noticed that?"

"Why, what did Lee say?"

"It involved the phrase 'furious lovemaking.'"

Alicia looked mildly disgusted. "I do  _not_  endorse that terminology." She shook her head. "'Furious lovemaking.' That phrase is so awful it makes me want to never have sex again."

"Well, we're in agreement on that, at least."

"Good." Her eyes flicked back to her magazine. "Were you waiting for very long?"

"Not terribly. Fred was kind enough to share some of his wine, so I had that to keep me occupied."

There was a beat of silence and once again, I could see the wheels turning in Alicia's head.

"Don't read into that," I added quickly. "I had nowhere else to go and he happened to be out there already."

Alicia set down her magazine, her lips pressing together. "I know we said we were going to talk about this later and I don't mean to try and relitigate it now, but if I ask you another question, would you promise not to be angry with me?"

I groaned and flopped backwards onto my bed. "Do we really have to do this?"

"Think of it this way: this is the last time I will get to annoy you as a single woman," she said. "Think about how much you're going to miss this after Saturday."

"I don't believe you have any intention of  _not_  annoying me once you're married."

"But it will be different because I'll be  _married._ "

I sighed, puffing out my cheeks. "Fine. But this is the last time."

The bed shifted as she plopped down next to me on her stomach. "I just want to do this thought experiment. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Fred is actually interested in you."

"Unlikely."

"We're not commenting on the likelihood and that's not my question," she said, a hint of an edge creeping into her voice. "Let's say that this is indisputable. Here is my question: would you reciprocate that interest or are you not attracted to him at all?"

I let out a long sigh. "Alicia."

"Maggie, part of your wedding gift to me is indulging me in this one last annoyance."

I sighed again. "I mean, yes, of course. He's handsome and funny and a successful businessman. What's not to be interested in? I mean, honestly, I'd be getting in line with every other single person who is interested in men."

"I'm going to point out something and I want you to listen," said Alicia, her voice losing some of its earlier mirth. "You described Fred as such: handsome, funny, successful. You didn't say 'well, he's got that scar, he's got that emotional baggage from almost dying, he doesn't sleep as well as he used to.'"

"Seems like a rather unfair way to look at it. That's not what makes him who he is."

"Oh, this is lovely, you are making my point for me," she said happily. "Why is it that you are willing to extend that kindness to Fred, but not to yourself?"

It was the sort of infuriating question that I couldn't answer because it would prove me wrong and I wasn't ready to admit that yet.

"Why is it so hard for you to believe that someone—let's say Fred—could look at you and see more than the parts of you that are hurting?" she said when I didn't reply. "Why is it so difficult for you to believe that anyone could look at you and see wonderful things?"

I swallowed and was surprised to find that my eyes were welling up with tears. "I don't know," I said softly.

"Oh fuck, I didn't mean to make you cry," she said.

"I'm not crying," I said, blinking furiously.

"Well, you're close enough." She sighed and squeezed my shoulder. "Closer than I intended, certainly."

I took a deep breath. "It's fine. I'm fine."

She waited a moment before continuing. "Listen. I've said what I wanted to say and I won't press you more on this, but…" She took a deep breath. "Just…think about what I've said. Just now and earlier today as well."

I swallowed. "Okay."

"I know you're still hurting. And I get that. I do." Her voice took on a low, urgent sort of quality. "But you are more than the sum of your scars, Maggie. That's only one part of you. And it's not unlovable nor is it the only thing there is to love about you."

I found I could only nod.

We were both quiet for a moment.

"Sorry for making you almost cry," she said finally.

I took a deep breath. "It's okay. Sorry for adding more unnecessary drama to your wedding week."

"That's the thing, Mags," she said quietly. "It's not unnecessary drama when someone you love is hurting."

That comment gave me pause and the sadness in her eyes made me remember that these little jabs at myself seemed to hurt Alicia, too.

"Okay?" she said after a moment.

"Okay."

We lay there quietly for a while, staring at the ceiling.

I had more thinking to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you all so much for taking the time to read, follow, and comment on/review this fic. There has been some crazy work stuff going on this month and no joke, seeing an alert on email has often turned my day around. Thank you.
> 
> I am now on Wattpad as akabluekat. Currently, only Playing With Fire is posted, but I'll be putting Delicate up soon. I follow back, so please feel free to find me there.
> 
> So, this chapter is like…two weeks earlier than I thought it would be, which has happened never, possibly. This throws off my timeline a bit because I've got two active WIPs and my updates are typically based on when I think the other fic's update will be done. So for the next chapter, let's say that it will be sometime between late February and mid-March 2019. You can usually find updated estimates on my Tumblr or my fanfiction dot net profile.
> 
> I'm excited to share this chapter—I've had bits and pieces of scenes written for a while in my notes document and I've been looking forward to turning them into a cohesive thing. Let me know what you think! I love hearing from you.


	10. Fireworks

 

 

The wedding was on Saturday, so Friday was supposed to conclude with a quiet evening in.

We'd spent most of the day occupied with various wedding-related preparations: the manicure/pedicure/brunch extravaganza in the morning, errands and final checklists in the afternoon. I had happily immersed myself in these things, largely because I knew if I stood still for long enough, my mind would inevitably wander to the conversation Alicia and I had had the night before, which brought up all sorts of thoughts and feelings that I preferred to leave forgotten in the dustiest corners of my mind.

My plan had been to take a Calming Draught after dinner and fall asleep early—and I'd been looking forward to it. Since I couldn't take Calming Draughts on a regular basis, the opportunity to do so always felt a bit like a special occasion…which, I suppose, in itself is rather sad, but I tried not to think much about that.

Alicia, unfortunately, had other plans.

At some point during the course of the day—and it's anyone's guess as to when she found the time—she had discovered that the city puts on a fireworks show every Friday evening during the summer. The first show of the season was that evening and it was traditionally the most impressive in the series.

And for reasons known only to Alicia, she was dead set on seeing that show. Never mind that it started at ten o'clock and lasted for an hour; never mind that she'd heard that we needed to arrive at half past nine if we wanted a prayer of finding a good spot; never mind that tomorrow was going to be a very long and busy day. Any sensible objections were moot: she was the bride and fireworks were imperative to her present and future happiness.

She explained this to everyone over the last few bites of dinner, her eyes gleaming with the sort of intensity that is normally reserved for, say, cults.

Fred and George were perhaps the most interested in this excursion, which I suppose was expected. Katie, Oliver, and Angelina shrugged and said sure, that sounded fine. I suspected that Lee and I had no choice, so we both sort of smiled and nodded. Both sets of parents were less than enthusiastic.

"You ought to be going to bed early," said Aunt Lynn. "You've got a big day tomorrow, sweets."

Alicia dismissed this concern with a wave of her hand. "My hair appointment isn't until eleven. I can get a full ten hours of sleep if I want to  _and_  still have time for a really long shower."

"You  _can_ , but that doesn't mean you  _should_."

"It's my last evening as a single woman!" said Alicia, throwing her hands up in a grand sort of gesture. "Don't you think it'd be a rather lovely way to conclude this part of my life?"

"Yes, it is the end of an era," said Uncle Pete. "That is why your mother and I will be spending our evening weeping in each other's arms. We are not emotionally prepared for our precious baby girl to grow up and get married."

Alicia, ever the picture of elegance, pretended to vomit into her wineglass.

"You are not being respectful of our emotional journey, poppet," said Uncle Pete, pausing for a moment to wipe away a fake tear. "I've blinked and suddenly my sweet, darling baby girl is a beautiful woman."

Alicia pretended to retch once again; Aunt Lynn elbowed her. "Alicia Renee," she said in a warning tone that took me right back to our childhood.

"Are you quite sure you still want her?" Uncle Pete said to Lee. "We've a strict no returns or exchanges policy, even if you've got the receipt. Learned our lesson the other three times we tried to marry her off. Three perfectly good dowries gone to waste."

"I just want to be very clear that my father is making a very stupid joke," said Alicia to Mr. and Mrs. Jordan as Uncle Pete chortled at his own joke.

Mrs. Jordan threw her head back laughing. "Darling," she said, placing a gentle hand on Alicia's wrist, "I think we've more cause to worry that  _you'll_  want to exchange  _Lee_."

"He can be a bit much," agreed Mr. Jordan.

Lee looked entirely unbothered by this assessment. "She knows what she's signing up for," he said with a shrug and a quick wink that seemed intended for Alicia only. She gave him the sort of warm look that made me think they were likely playing footsie underneath the table.

"Just so you are aware, we  _will_  allow a return after the ceremony," said Mr. Jordan to Alicia. He lowered his voice. "But it will set you back twenty Galleons."

This assessment seemed to horrify Lee. "I'm worth  _much_  more than twenty Galleons!"

"He's absolutely right," said Mrs. Jordan in a calm, businesslike tone. "Throw in a packet of crisps and you'll have yourself a deal."

The conversation never really got back on track after that and by the time we'd paid the bill, Alicia had failed to win either Mr. and Mrs. Jordan or Uncle Pete and Aunt Lynn over to her cause. Both sets of parents declined the invitation, citing the late hour and the long day ahead. Aunt Lynn went so far as to make all of us individually promise her that we would go to bed straightaway once the show was over; she told me that I was to dose Alicia with a sleeping draught if she wasn't in bed with the lights out by half past eleven and I was reasonably certain she was being serious about it.

The rest of us made plans to meet up on the terraces at a quarter past nine so we could head down to the beach together, which left us with about an hour to kill before we needed to meet up. And apparently, an hour is all it takes for everyone to completely lose focus: at nine fifteen, Alicia and I were the only ones who had arrived at the designated meeting place.

"Well, this isn't encouraging," muttered Alicia.

I leaned against the half wall of the terrace. "Did you not learn anything from that hike? This group has serious problems with timeliness."

Alicia glanced at her watch and shrugged. "I mean…as long as they get it out of their system before tomorrow, I won't be too fussed about it."

Fred and Lee turned up at exactly nine twenty-three.

"All right, so half of the group is here and we are only eight minutes later than we said we'd be," said Alicia in lieu of a greeting. "D'you know what's happening with the others?"

Lee gave her the sort of too-wide smile that I only ever saw when he was worried about upsetting her and trying not to show it. "Well," he said, "would you prefer the good news or the bad news first?"

Alicia sighed. "The good news, I suppose."

Lee spread his arms wide open and his smile edged just a little closer to too forced. "The good news…is that we're here."

Alicia's lips thinned and she crossed her arms. "If that's the good news, I am not particularly encouraged."

"That's insulting," said Fred. "We're delightful company. You're lucky to have us." He caught my eye and grinned. "Tell her, Maggie."

"You leave me out of this," I said to him, though I could feel a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth and a blush blooming on my cheeks.

Alicia indulged in a quick eyeroll but otherwise ignored Fred. "What's the bad news?" she asked Lee.

"Well, first off, everyone is in varying stages of not ready—" Lee began.

Alicia groaned. "Oh for fuck's  _sake_."

"—aaaaand your parents would like to go over a few last minute details before we leave," continued Lee, wrapping his arms around Alicia like a hug would either contain her irritation or make the circumstances less frustrating.

"Can't it wait until after?" asked Alicia with a bit of a whine in her voice.

"Per your mum: they are going to bed like sensible people," said Lee. "So…no."

Alicia let out an even more dramatic groan and turned and buried her face against Lee's chest. "Could they not have done this at literally any point during the last hour? We're going to miss the sodding show at this point. Assuming we can even get a spot."

"Well, let's not be unreasonable," said Lee, rubbing her back soothingly. "Your parents didn't ask to speak to Maggie and Fred, they could go down early and stake out our spot." He looked at the two of us and nodded his head vigorously, while mouthing "Please."

"Certainly," said Fred. "For an hourly fee, of course."

Lee scowled and raised his middle finger at Fred from behind Alicia's back, mouthing what I thought might be "Tosser."

"I think the maid of honor and best man are supposed to do things like this for no charge," I said to Fred.

Lee flashed a thumbs up from behind Alicia's back and blew me an exaggerated, silent kiss.

"Yeah, but it's not the actual wedding day, is it?" said Fred, his smile turning particularly cheeky. "I think we're well within our right to charge for that service. My contract was very specific."

Lee managed one last glare at Fred before Alicia lifted her head from his chest, her despondent look from earlier now replaced by a lightly annoyed look. "I can offer you beer," she said to Fred, picking up the mini cooler from where she'd set it on the ground. "And possibly ice cream if Katie and Oliver come through on that promise."

Fred raised an eyebrow. "What sort of beer?"

"The cheap stuff that turned out to be surprisingly good."

"Hmm." He took the cooler from Alicia and lifted it, as though weighing its contents. "Right. Well, I'm sold. Maggie might not be so easily bought, though."

"Maggie is utterly committed to my happiness," said Alicia, unhooking her beach bag from her shoulder and passing it to me like I'd already agreed. She aimed a stern look at Fred. "Unlike  _some_  people."

"It is the most important thing to me after coffee," I said, giving her a rather sardonic smile.

This seemed to be enough for Alicia, who beamed at me before turning to stick out her tongue at Fred. "This is why Maggie's my favorite and you're barely in the top fifty."

Fred shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time that's been the case."

"Eh, it's a rigged system. I reckon I'm only in the top twenty," said Lee.

"Nonsense," said Alicia, wrapping her arms around Lee and looking up at him dreamily. "You are in the top eleven. Usually." She stood on her tiptoes to peck him chastely on the lips.

Lee frowned. "We might need to have a conversation about this."

"Don't worry about it," said Alicia, giving him a beatific smile and tapping him on the nose.

"Twenty Galleons and a bag of crisps and now this." Lee sighed. "This has been a rough evening for my self esteem."

"Oh, you know I'm teasing," said Alicia, planting a sloppy kiss on his cheek before releasing him. "And honestly, you're probably verging on the side of too much self esteem as it is."

"I am going to have to object to that very unfair assessment."

Alicia glanced at her watch. "You're going to have to do that later. We need to get going if we want any chance at being on time."

"Have fun, I suppose," I said, hitching her beach bag up onto my shoulder.

"Eh. Probably not."

"That's the spirit," said Lee, squeezing Alicia's shoulders.

"We'll tell the others to meet you down there," said Alicia with a grim sort of smile. "Hopefully we won't be long—I'll try to hurry them through it."

"All right, see you soon."

"See you."

The first thing that became clear to me as I followed Fred down to the beach was that Alicia's concerns were rather unfounded: save for a handful of other tourists and a few locals, the beach was relatively empty.

Almost suspiciously empty.

I wouldn't have put it past Alicia to think that it might be a good idea to try and engineer some sort of situation where Fred and I just  _happened_  to be alone together, but I didn't think she had the ability to pull it off. Alicia was a terrible liar and her tells were all hilariously obvious: sudden and persistent laughter that bordered more on a cackle, a visible struggle to not smile, a penchant for accidentally saying the exact thing that gave away the entire ruse. I hadn't seen any of that tonight: she had seemed genuinely frustrated and surprised by the change of plans.

But still. It was rather odd.

I tried not to think about this as Fred and I chose a spot and spread out the picnic blanket, using a sticking spell to weigh down the corners. In the unlikely event that Alicia had managed to pull off that sort of plan, there wasn't anything that I could do about it now anyway. I needed to focus my energy on not making an ass of myself until the others arrived. It was only thirty minutes, tops. I could manage that. Just thirty minutes under a rapidly darkening sky in the company of a very handsome man. Not a problem. I could handle it.

I sat down on the blanket and toed off my shoes. Fred sat down next to me—not overly close, mind: just close enough that I could catch a whiff of cinnamon and something woodsy if the wind was just right. Just enough to leave me wondering.

Right. I could handle this. I could definitely handle this.

"So," he said, handing me a beer from the cooler and taking one for himself, "am I going to run into you at two o'clock in the morning or d'you think it'll be closer to sunrise?"

He was smiling ever so slightly; he had a slight dimple on his left cheek. I'd never noticed that before and briefly I wondered if George had one as well or if that was unique to Fred.

Right. He had asked me a question.

"Oh, I'm taking a Calming Draught tonight," I said.

His dimple deepened. "Living it up, I see."

It occurred to me quite suddenly that I had been staring perhaps half a second too long at that particular corner of his mouth. Cheeks burning, I looked away from him and busied myself with opening my beer.

"I can't take them regularly, so this is an  _extremely_  special occasion," I said, fumbling for a moment with the twist cap. "Though I think I've just aged myself fifty years by saying that."

He chuckled. "Will it make you feel better if I tell you I'm also taking one tonight and that I also save them for special occasions because I started building up a tolerance?"

"Maybe," I said.

Even though I wasn't planning on being awake, I couldn't help but feel a little pang of disappointment. There were only so many evenings left on this holiday, only so many opportunities for us to have those serendipitous collisions in the middle of the night when everything felt hopelessly lonely.

"I think that's one of the things I miss the most," I said after a moment.

"What's that?"

"Calming Draughts." The moment it came out of my mouth, I realized how stupid it sounded. "I mean—it's not the only thing that I miss. I was speaking strictly in the category of very small, inconsequential things. Obviously, I miss people more…" I trailed off, my words sticking in my throat.

His hand brushed gently against my shoulder. It was a brief thing—the sort of comforting gesture that you might make to a friend who was visibly distressed—but I couldn't help but note the warm heat of his palm and the goosebumps forming beneath the fabric of my shirt.

I opened my mouth to mumble some awkward apology.

"If you are going to say sorry, I will chuck you into the ocean," he said gravely.

And just like that, the odd, intimate quiet between us was gone—I laughed and his hand fell away from my shoulder and my cheeks were burning because it all seemed so desperately silly.

"Anyway." I took a deep breath and a swig of beer. "What I meant to say is…I miss being able to solve a sleepless night with a Calming Draught."

I risked a glance at him and noted that his smile had turned rather sad.

"Yeah," he said, his gaze focused on some point on the horizon. "I miss that, too."

We were quiet again and I looked away from him, quickly scanning the beach for Alicia, Lee, Angelina, George, anyone who might save me from my own perpetual awkwardness. The beach was still relatively empty, though, the pushing crowds having not yet materialized. I found myself once again questioning Alicia's motives, a nervous sort of feeling prickling in my stomach. I swallowed and took another sip of my beer. The silence between the two of us suddenly felt telling, like Fred might start suspecting that this was all engineered, that the palm trees and waves might start whispering that Alicia was trying to set him up with her odd cousin. Briefly, I considered making an excuse, pretending that I'd forgotten something so I could go back and hide in my room until the others showed up.

But on the other hand…the slight dimple in his cheek and the faint smell of cinnamon and something woodsy had me pinned to the spot, my feet buried in the cool sand as the stars gradually began to wink into the night sky.

I was an idiot, certainly. I knew that staying here and entertaining these little daydreams was pointless. I was Sisyphus and Tantalus combined: longing for what I could not have and desperately believing that  _this_ time, things would be different.

I finally gave into the temptation to break the silence. "So. Are you going to be able to enjoy the fireworks, or are you going to be taking notes the entire time?"

He raised an eyebrow, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Who says notetaking isn't enjoyable?"

"It might be for some people, but I suspect that you are not among that particular demographic."

He sighed and took a swig of his beer. "It's like you don't know me at all."

I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. "I don't think I saw you take out a notebook during our entire time at Hogwarts."

He gave me a puckish grin and tapped his temple with a forefinger. "It's all up here. I took mental notes. Much more accurate."

"Oh, I'm sure they were  _quite_  mental," I teased.

"That was a cheap shot, Maggie Carlyle," he said, giving me his best approximation of a stern look. "You're better than that."

I gave an overly dramatic sigh. "It's like you don't know  _me_  at all."

It occurred to me that I was flirting. Again. Like I hadn't spent half of this trip reminding myself why that was a stupid idea.

If he noticed—and possibly he didn't because that's how terrible I was at flirting—he didn't say anything. He merely grinned and chuckled quietly. "Well played." He took a long pull from his beer. "To answer your question, though, this is a slightly larger scale than what we do. Our fireworks are more intended for home use." His expression turned a little sly. "For now, anyway."

"Got your eyes set on the municipal fireworks market?"

"Maybe." His eyes sparkled with a very particular kind of mischief that reminded me of toads slipped into book bags and sweets that turn your hair green. "Though honestly, the last time we looked at it, the market was really too niche to make it practical for us. I think it's more the challenge that's intriguing, you know?"

"Makes sense."

"What about you?" he said after a beat. "Have any big plans for your professional life?"

I laughed, but it came out harsh and abrupt. "Hah. No." I dragged my thumbnail along the edge of the label on my beer bottle, the paper tearing easily, saturated with condensation. "I wait tables. My job isn't exactly challenging like that."

He raised an eyebrow. "Listen, Maggie, having now worked with the general public for a few years, I can attest to the fact that many people are idiots. Waiting tables means you have to deal with them when their idiocy is exacerbated by hunger. That sounds pretty challenging to me. It may be one of the most challenging jobs, period."

"I meant that it's not the same sort of challenging that you were talking about," I said, absently rolling the bits of paper from the label between my thumb and middle finger. "It's less puzzle solving and more, you know…how do I not dump this pot of coffee on this man who's just insinuated that I am personally rather similar to certain high-profile Dark Wizards."

"Now that's an example that sounds too specific to not be true."

I laughed—genuinely this time. "Of course it's true."

"What could you have possibly done to provoke that sort of comparison?"

"He wanted a steak and kidney pie. I told him that we did not have that dish on the menu, the chef did not take special requests, and so I could not provide it to him. You know, which is practically the same thing as being a Death Eater."

"They were notoriously fussy about their meat pies."

I laughed again. "Yes, clearly."

"So, did you dump the pot of coffee on him, or did you opt for something subtler, like tampering with his food?"

I shook my head. "Neither. I'd only just started working there and it was only a year after the War had ended, so…I just started crying."

Fred looked appropriately appalled. "Right. You're going to need to give me his name so I can avenge you."

I knew that he was joking but…I couldn't help but feel a little thrilled by the idea of Fred Weasley tracking down a rude customer on my behalf.

"There's no need," I said instead. "For one, he did have the decency to look a little embarrassed when I started crying. But Sonia—she's one of the co-owners—she'd caught the tail end of what he'd been saying and she came straight over and let him have it. I think his ears may still be ringing, to tell you the truth."

"I should hope so," said Fred. "That's bloody awful."

I shrugged and took another swig of beer. "It's not always like that. I mean, I'm sure you've had your fair share of awful customers. You learn how to deal with it."

"Well, for me it's not dealing with it so much as it is throwing rude people out of my shop with impunity." He sighed wistfully. "One day I'll probably go mad with power."

"That's the dream, I suppose."

"Is that what you aspire to?" he asked. "Owning your own restaurant and/or going mad with power?"

I laughed quietly and gave an exaggerated shudder. "God, no. I'd hate that. Both options, I mean."

"What do you want to do, then?"

I bit my lip, my smile fading some, a hint of a sigh escaping my lips. "Oh…that's a rather tricky question."

"I've got time."

He was watching me with a sort of guarded curiosity, like he had a notion that it was one of those things that was just a little harder to explain and that it might cost me something to do it if he wasn't careful and prodded too much.

And maybe it was silly of me, maybe I was taking advantage of his kindness for the sake of my unrequited, Sisyphean crush, but something about that quiet and careful way that he was looking at me made me feel like it wouldn't be so hard to talk about it out here on the beach underneath the stars.

I set my beer bottle down in the sand next to me and picked up the cap from where it had fallen on the blanket, rolling it in between my fingers, just to give my hands something to do.

"I wanted to be a Potioneer before the War," I said after a moment. "I'd started on the certification after I finished with school. I'd won a small stipend and everything." I cleared my throat. "I—er. Well. I had to change my plans after…well, you know. With recovery and everything."

I pressed the bottle cap between my palms, weighing my words carefully in my mind. "It was supposed to be a temporary thing, taking time off. At first it was a matter of just…needing something uncomplicated that would get me out of my flat and keep me fed. My concentration just wasn't the same…"

I released my palms. The bottlecap had left an imprint on my hand, a sort of multi-pointed circle from the jagged edges of the underside of the cap. "Then it just sort of…stuck. Because it was easy but also…"

I swallowed and took a deep breath, watching as the mark began to fade from my hand. "There's part of me that is a little afraid of trying to get back to it, that I'll find out that I'm just too different than I was before. And that just…it feels like one loss too many." I paused for another moment, picking up the bottlecap and twisting it between my fingers again. "I guess it's easier to speculate on it than to fail and confirm what I suspected all along."

I wanted him to put his hand on my shoulder again, but he simply sat on the blanket, listening and waiting for me to say what I needed to say.

"I miss taking risks," I said after a moment. "I mean, not that I was particularly adventurous or daring, but I could work up my nerve when I needed to. I wasn't afraid of so many things. I wouldn't have been stymied by something like this."

"You're talking about it, though," said Fred. "And I suspect you haven't really done that before."

I shook my head. "No. Not really."

"Well. That counts for something."

"I suppose."

We were quiet for a moment. I rolled the bottlecap between my fingers, feeling like I'd said too much.

"I think you should try," he said finally. "With Potions, I mean."

A dry smirk curled at the corners of my mouth. "Have you got a soft spot for lost causes?"

"No, I've a keen eye for sure things. You endured Severus Snape for seven years in order to study something that you really enjoy. That tells me you've got a hell of a lot of tenacity and you're made of sterner stuff than you believe." He paused for a moment. "And if you're wondering if I'm implying that having Snape for a teacher inflicted about the same level of emotional damage as the Battle of Hogwarts, the answer is yes."

I laughed quietly. "Don't you think that's a little hyperbolic?"

"Not particularly. National hero or not, I think his teaching strategy might have been based on the infliction of emotional distress."

I snorted. "I suppose that's true."

"So, you got through Snape; you can get through this."

I worried my lower lip between my teeth. "I dunno. Sometimes it feels like too much has changed."

"Not everything, though. Not the important bits. Not the stuff that makes you you."

"Maybe."

He sighed. "That's the best I'm going to get from you, isn't it? A sad sounding 'maybe.'"

I laughed. "Well, I'll think about it. That's better than a 'maybe,' right?"

"Maybe."

His tone was a little teasing and he had a slight smile as he looked at me. There was a fraction of a second where his gaze dropped to my lips, quick enough that I couldn't quite decide if I imagined it, quick enough to leave me wondering a little, to convince me that I could hold his gaze just to see what would happen, because  _maybe_ …

There was an almighty  _boom_  and the sky lit up in a blaze of green.

_A flash of green light. Evan falling to the floor, eyes wide and empty—_

I looked away from Fred, my heart pounding, that light again—

_A cruel laugh. "You brought this on yourself, Maggie. I warned you. I told you what would happen when I saw him next."_

_A horrible scream._

I looked to the sky, expecting to see some sort of terrible judgment coming down upon us: instead, there was a bright, fiery green whale cavorting across the night sky.

The fireworks. The fireworks had started. Vaguely, I recalled that I'd seen the green whale on a advert for the Chamber of Commerce—it was some sort of logo, the whale had something to do with the discovery story of the island—

_The screaming doesn't stop and I realize that I'm the one screaming._

" _Don't worry. You'll join him soon enough."_

_There is a searing, blinding pain and—_

"Maggie?"

Fingertips brushed against my shoulder. I looked away from the sky. Fred was looking at me, hand outstretched like he wasn't sure quite what to do. My mouth felt dry. I folded my arms across my stomach, pulling my cardigan more tightly around me, hands shaking. I could smell the smoke of some distant bonfire and I felt a little sick.

"I…" I swallowed. "I—er. The light—caught me off guard."

His expression softened and he squeezed my shoulder. "D'you need to go in?"

I shook my head. "No, I'm fine. I just—it'll take me a moment, but I'm fine. Really."

I was glad that he didn't ask me if I was sure, that he simply took my words at face value. I stared resolutely at the sky, waiting for my heartrate to slow, for the memory of screaming to fade, determined not to let a stupid coincidence and bad timing ruin my evening.

Fred kept his hand on my shoulder. Like before, it wasn't a romantic gesture—it was an anchor, a reminder that I wasn't alone, that there were many years and miles between me and that day in May. It was a kindness, a mercy, a hand stretched out across the abyss to pull me back to safety.

We stayed like that until Alicia and the others made their way to the blanket a few minutes later, Alicia grumbling about her parents and Katie and Oliver bickering about whose fault it was that the ice cream had melted. Fred caught my eye and squeezed my shoulder once before dropping his hand. I gave him a slight, grateful smile, wishing that I had the courage to reach for his hand as it fell away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hi friends! Thank you so much for your feedback, faves, and follows! You always make my day!
> 
> So…this chapter is like…a month later than I had hoped. I'm sorry about the delay. We've had a few unanticipated departures at work in the last couple months and I'd been putting in extra hours for various things related to that. It all started to catch up with me and I just hit a period of a couple weeks where I was pretty exhausted. To make matters worse, this chapter was just really tricky to write and it took me a while to figure out several plotting issues.
> 
> As a precaution, I'm going to give myself a little more time than I normally do for the next chapter. Things are settling down a bit at work, but I want to be cautious so I don't burn out. I hope to have an update by the end of May 2019. If I finish it earlier, I'll post it earlier, but I want to give myself a little extra time just in case I need it. And as a reminder, I generally post info on updates on my tumblr (akabluekat), so you can always check that if you are wondering. Thanks for your patience.
> 
> Let me know what you think of this chapter!


End file.
